Limelight
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Pictures

The sign, the floor, and the plasterwork.

Three pictures of the room rather than of the bands in it, and the reason for that is further down the page.

The building, on a good night

The sign

The marquee over the Ravenscliffe Road entrance is not the 1908 original — that went for scrap in 1969 — but it is built to the original drawings, which turned up in a box at the West Yorkshire Archive in 2011 along with Kitchin’s section through the balcony. There are two hundred and eighty bulbs in it. They are ordinary filament bulbs rather than anything clever, they cost us about four hundred pounds a year to run, and roughly one a week goes, which is why there is a ladder permanently in the foyer. Every argument we have had about replacing them with something modern has ended the same way. It is the only lit sign left on that side of town and people photograph it in the rain.

The floor

The second picture is the floor about forty minutes into a Saturday, which is the only honest way to photograph this room. The maple was laid in 1908 for a chorus of forty and it is the reason the building is listed at all — sprung floors of that size and age almost never survive, because the cheapest thing to do with one is board over it, and every one of the Vaudette’s four previous owners nearly did. It came up in 2011, was re-sprung, and went back down board for board in the order it came out. We re-sand it every other summer and it has another century in it.

The plasterwork

The third is the proscenium cartouche, about seven metres up, photographed from a cherry-picker in 2012 a fortnight after we first saw it. From 1968 until 2011 it was hidden behind a false ceiling hung by the bingo operator, who wanted a lower room to heat — an act of pure commercial indifference that is the only reason any of it is still here. The lyre in the middle is Kitchin’s signature and appears on all four of his theatres; this is the only one still standing. It has been cleaned once, with soft brushes, over eleven days. It has never been repainted and it is not going to be.

Why there are no photographs of bands on this page

Because we do not own them. Every picture of a gig here belongs to the photographer who took it or the band who paid for it, and a venue quietly helping itself to both is exactly the sort of thing this building has spent thirteen years not doing. What you get instead are pictures of the room, which is ours, and which is the thing you actually came to look at. If you have photographed a show here and you would like it on this page with your name on it, send it to the box office — we pay fifty pounds a picture and we have bought about ninety so far.

Filming and photography in the building

Three feature films, two dramas and an unreasonable number of music videos have shot here, mostly because the plasterwork does something on camera that a set cannot fake and the room is available on a weekday for three hundred and twenty pounds. Location enquiries go to Nadia. For personal photography at a show: cameras with a detachable lens need the artist’s permission, which is not us being difficult — it is usually written into their contract — and phones are fine everywhere except where somebody has specifically asked otherwise, which happens perhaps twice a year and is always announced from the stage. Tripods, no. Flash during a seated show, please, no.
In their words

A photographer, a man who had not been inside since it was the bingo, and somebody who rang ahead.

IA
Ife Adeyemi
Photographed the March residency

The light in there does half the work for you. I have shot forty venues and this is the only one where the house rig, the gilt and the dust in the beams all agree with each other. They paid me for three pictures without my having to ask twice.

CW
Colin Whitrow
First gig here at 61

I had not been inside since it was the bingo, and I stood in the stalls looking at that ceiling for a good five minutes before the support came on. My daughter had to tell me to sit down. It is the same plasterwork. They cleaned it and left it alone.

HR
Hannah Reid
Wheelchair user, seated shows

I rang, Nadia held a space on the flat with a clear view and a free ticket for my sister, and there were no forms and nobody asking me to prove anything. The accessible loo is on the same level. It should not be remarkable and it still is.

See it properly

Photographs do not do the room justice.

Free tours on the first Saturday of the month at eleven, an hour long, no need to book. Nadia takes them herself and you get to stand on the stage, which is the bit everybody actually came for.
Ask about a tour01422 960 118
First Saturday monthly, 11am · Step-free throughout · No charge