One of the most frequently asked questions by visitors to The Criterion is, "who are all the names on the tiled main staircase?" The staircase is the main entrance into the building and descends from the foyer entrance right down to the stalls bar displaying the names of 39 composers.
The theatre was intended, by the designer Thomas Verity, to be a concert hall and hence the names of the composers were a fitting decoration. However, during building work, for reasons unknown, the concert hall idea was scraped in favour of a theatre. The tiles of composers are the only legacy of the original concert hall idea.

Here is the full list of composers in descending order:

* The first name we come across is perhaps the oddest. This is actually painted on the wall in the style of the tile work. We cannot find a composer with the name of Moore and we cannot be certain of when it was painted. Could it be a misplaced memorial to Mary Moore, wife of Charles Wyndham?
** We cannot find a composer called Shields although we are pretty certain it's a mispelling of Shield.
*** Schumann , Wagner & Beethoven have two tiles each.
**** Handel has 3 tiles.