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Lyceum Theatre (New York)
Encyclopedia
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
theatre located at 149 West 45th Street in midtown-Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
.
It has the distinction of being the oldest surviving Broadway venue (along with the New Amsterdam Theatre
New Amsterdam Theatre
The New Amsterdam Theatre is a Broadway theater located at 214 West 42nd Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues in the Theatre District of Manhattan, New York City, off of Times Square...
), the oldest continuously operating legitimate theatre in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, and the first Broadway theatre ever to be granted landmark status (1974). It is one of the few theatres in New York to operate under its original name.
Designed by architects Herts & Tallant, the Lyceum was built by impresario
Impresario
An impresario is a person who organizes and often finances concerts, plays or operas; analogous to a film producer in filmmaking, television production and an angel investor in business...
Daniel Frohman
Daniel Frohman
Daniel Frohman was a Jewish American theatrical producer and manager, and an early film producer.Frohman was born in Sandusky, Ohio...
, whose brother Charles
Charles Frohman
Charles Frohman was an American theatrical producer. Frohman was producing plays by 1889 and acquired his first Broadway theatre by 1892. He discovered and promoted many stars of the American theatre....
served as manager until his death in 1915. It replaced Daniel Frohman's earlier Lyceum
Lyceum Theatre (New York, 1885-1902)
The Lyceum Theatre operated on Manhattan’s Fourth Avenue between 23rd and 24th Streets, from 1885 to 1902, when it was torn down to make way for the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower and replaced by the Lyceum Theatre on 45th Street...
on Fourth Ave. that closed in April 1902. The new Lyceum opened on November 2, 1903 with the play The Proud Prince.
Among the prominent performers who appeared on its stage in the theatre's early years were Ethel Barrymore
Ethel Barrymore
Ethel Barrymore was an American actress and a member of the Barrymore family of actors.-Early life:Ethel Barrymore was born Ethel Mae Blythe in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the second child of the actors Maurice Barrymore and Georgiana Drew...
, Billie Burke
Billie Burke
Mary William Ethelbert Appleton "Billie" Burke was an American actress. She is primarily known to modern audiences as Glinda the Good Witch of the North in the musical film The Wizard of Oz. She was nominated for an Academy Award for her performance as Emily Kilbourne in Merrily We Live...
, Basil Rathbone
Basil Rathbone
Sir Basil Rathbone, KBE, MC, Kt was an English actor. He rose to prominence in England as a Shakespearean stage actor and went on to appear in over 70 films, primarily costume dramas, swashbucklers, and, occasionally, horror films...
, Fanny Brice
Fanny Brice
Fanny Brice was a popular and influential American illustrated song "model," comedienne, singer, theatre and film actress, who made many stage, radio and film appearances and is known as the creator and star of the top-rated radio comedy series, The Baby Snooks Show...
, Walter Huston
Walter Huston
Walter Thomas Huston was a Canadian-born American actor. He was the father of actor and director John Huston and the grandfather of actress Anjelica Huston and actor Danny Huston.-Life and career:...
, Miriam Hopkins
Miriam Hopkins
Ellen Miriam Hopkins was an American actress known for her versatility in a wide variety of roles.Hopkins was born in Savannah, Georgia, and raised in Bainbridge, a town in the state's southwest near the Alabama border...
, and Cornelia Otis Skinner
Cornelia Otis Skinner
Cornelia Otis Skinner was an American author and actress.-Biography:Skinner was the daughter of the actor Otis Skinner and his wife Maud Skinner. After attending the all-girls' Baldwin School and Bryn Mawr College and studying theatre at the Sorbonne in Paris, she began her career on the stage...
.
The theatre maintains most of its original Beaux-Arts design, including its elaborate marble staircases and undulating marquee. Although it has three levels, it is one of the smallest Broadway theatres in terms of capacity, seating only 950. An apartment located above the orchestra, originally used by Frohman, is now the headquarters of the Shubert Archives.
Notable productions
- 1903: The Admirable CrichtonThe Admirable CrichtonThe Admirable Crichton is a comic stage play written in 1902 by J. M. Barrie. It was produced by Charles Frohman and opened at the Duke of York's Theatre in London on 4 November 1902, running for an extremely successful 828 performances. It starred H. B. Irving and Irene Vanbrugh...
- 1910: The Importance of Being EarnestThe Importance of Being EarnestThe Importance of Being Earnest, A Trivial Comedy for Serious People is a play by Oscar Wilde. First performed on 14 February 1895 at St. James's Theatre in London, it is a farcical comedy in which the protagonists maintain fictitious personae in order to escape burdensome social obligations...
- 1910: The Assumption of HanneleThe Assumption of HanneleThe Assumption of Hannele , also known simply as Hannele, is an 1893 play by the German playwright Gerhart Hauptmann. In contrast to Hauptmann's naturalistic dramas, The Assumption of Hannele adopts a more symbolist dramaturgy and includes a dream sequence. The play is the first in world literature...
- 1935: Three Men on a HorseThree Men on a HorseThree Men on a Horse is a play by George Abbott and John Cecil Holm. The comedy focuses on a man who discovers he has a talent for choosing the winning horse in a race as long as he never places a bet himself.-Plot:...
- 1936: The Postman Always Rings TwiceThe Postman Always Rings TwiceThe Postman Always Rings Twice is a 1934 crime novel by James M. Cain.The novel was quite successful and notorious upon publication, and is regarded as one of the more important crime novels of the 20th century...
- 1946: Born YesterdayBorn YesterdayBorn Yesterday is a play written by Garson Kanin which premiered on Broadway in 1946, starring Judy Holliday as Billie Dawn. The play was adapted intoa successful 1950 film of the same name.- Plot :...
- 1950: The Country GirlThe Country GirlThe Country Girl may refer to:* The Country Girl , a 1915 silent film, based on an 18th-century play by David Garrick* The Country Girl , a 1954 film based on a play by Clifford Odets, starring Bing Crosby and Grace Kelly...
- 1952: Time Out For GingerTime Out For GingerTime Out For Ginger is a Broadway comedy by Ronald Alexander that ran 248 performances at the Lyceum Theatre from November 26, 1952 to June 27, 1953, before becoming hugely popular in regional theatres throughout the 1950s and early 1960s...
- 1955: A Hatful of RainA Hatful of RainA Hatful of Rain is a 1957 dramatic film. The movie was a rarity for its time in its frank depiction of the effect of drug addiction.It is a medically and sociologically accurate account of the effects of morphine on an addict and his family ....
- 1957: Look Back in AngerLook Back in AngerLook Back in Anger is a John Osborne play—made into films in 1959, 1980, and 1989 -- about a love triangle involving an intelligent but disaffected young man , his upper-middle-class, impassive wife , and her haughty best friend . Cliff, an amiable Welsh lodger, attempts to keep the peace...
- 1960: A Taste of HoneyA Taste of HoneyA Taste of Honey is the first play by the British dramatist Shelagh Delaney, written when she was 18. It was initially intended as a novel, but she turned it into a play because she hoped to revitalize British theatre and to address social issues that she felt were not being presented...
- 1965: Entertaining Mr. Sloane
- 1972: Liza with a ZLiza with a ZLiza with a ‘Z’. A Concert for Television is a 1972 concert film, made for television and starring Liza Minnelli. The film was produced by Fred Ebb and Bob Fosse. As well as producing, Fosse also directed and choreographed the concert, and Ebb wrote and arranged the music with his song-writing...
- 1973: Out CryOut CryOut Cry is a play by Tennessee Williams which was one version of The Two-Character Play by Williams. Out Cry premiered at the Ivanhoe Theatre in Chicago on July 8, 1971. It debuted on Broadway at the Lyceum Theatre with a preview on February 28, 1973 and then ran from March 1-10...
- 1976: Something's AfootSomething's AfootSomething's Afoot is a murder mystery musical that spoofs detective stories, mainly the works of Agatha Christie, and especially her detective novel And Then There Were None . The book, music, and lyrics were written by James McDonald, David Vos, and Robert Gerlach, with additional music by Ed...
- 1980: Morning's at SevenMorning's at SevenMorning's at Seven is a play by Paul Osborn.Its plot focuses on four aging sisters living in a small Midwestern town in 1938, and it deals with ramifications within the family when two of them begin to question their lives and decide to make some changes before it’s too late.The original Broadway...
- 1982: Master Harold...and the BoysMaster Harold...and the BoysMaster Harold...and the boys is a play by Athol Fugard. It was first produced at the Yale Repertory Theatre in early 1982 and made its premiere on Broadway at the Lyceum Theatre on 4 May where it ran for 344 performances...
- 1985: As IsAs Is (play)As Is is a play by William M. Hoffman.The Circle Repertory Company and The Glines co-production, directed by Marshall W. Mason, opened on March 10, 1985 at the Circle Theatre, where it ran for 49 performances...
- 1995: Gentlemen Prefer BlondesGentlemen Prefer Blondes (musical)Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is a musical with a book by Joseph Fields and Anita Loos, lyrics by Leo Robin, and music by Jule Styne, based on the best-selling novel of the same name by Loos...
- 1997: The Sunshine BoysThe Sunshine BoysThe Sunshine Boys is a play by Neil Simon that was produced on Broadway in 1972 and later adapted for film and television.-Plot:The play focuses on aging Al Lewis and Willy Clark, a one-time vaudevillian team known as "Lewis and Clark" who, over the course of forty-odd years, not only grew to hate...
- 1999: Night Must FallNight Must FallNight Must Fall is a play, a psychological thriller, by Emlyn Williams, first performed in 1935.-Play:Mrs Bramson, a bitter, fussy, self-pitying elderly woman, resides in a remote part of Essex, with her intelligent yet subdued niece, Olivia...
- 2003: I Am My Own WifeI Am My Own WifeI Am My Own Wife is a play by Doug Wright based on his conversations with German transvestite Charlotte von Mahlsdorf. The one-man play premiered Off-Broadway in 2003 at Playwrights Horizons. It opened on Broadway later that year. The play was developed with Moisés Kaufman and his Tectonic...
- 2005: Steel MagnoliasSteel MagnoliasSteel Magnolias is a 1989 American comedy-drama film directed by Herbert Ross that stars Sally Field, Shirley MacLaine, Olympia Dukakis, Dolly Parton, Daryl Hannah and Julia Roberts....
- 2007: Inherit the WindInherit the Wind (play)Inherit the Wind is a play by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee. The play, which debuted in 1955, is a parable that fictionalizes the 1925 Scopes "Monkey" Trial as a means to discuss the then-contemporary McCarthy trials.-Background:...
; Is He Dead?Is He Dead?Is He Dead? is a play by Mark Twain. It was first published in print in 2003, after Mark Twain scholar Shelley Fisher Fishkin read the manuscript in the archives of the Mark Twain Papers at the University of California at Berkeley. The play was long known to scholars but never attracted much... - 2008: MacbethMacbethThe Tragedy of Macbeth is a play by William Shakespeare about a regicide and its aftermath. It is Shakespeare's shortest tragedy and is believed to have been written sometime between 1603 and 1607...
; [title of showTitle of show[title of show] is a one-act musical, with music and lyrics by Jeff Bowen and a book by Hunter Bell. The show chronicles its own creation as an entry in the New York Musical Theatre Festival, and follows the struggles of the author and composer/lyricist and their two actress friends during the...
] - 2009: reasons to be prettyReasons to be prettyreasons to be pretty is a play by Neil LaBute, his first to be staged on Broadway. The plot centers on four young working class friends and lovers who become increasingly dissatisfied with their dead-end lives and each other...
- 2009: In the Next Room (or The Vibrator Play)In the Next Room (or The Vibrator Play)In the Next Room is a play by Sarah Ruhl. It concerns the early history of the vibrator, when doctors used it as a clinical device to bring women to orgasm as treatment for "hysteria." Other themes include Victorian ignorance of female sexual desire, motherhood and breastfeeding, and jealousy...
(Oct 2009-Jan 2010) - 2010: LoopedLoopedLooped is a play by Matthew Lombardo that had its Broadway run in 2010, after two previous productions in 2008 and 2009, all of them featuring Valerie Harper.-Productions:...
(Feb 2010-Apr 2010) - 2010: The Scottsboro BoysThe Scottsboro Boys (musical)The Scottsboro Boys is a musical with a book by David Thompson, music by John Kander and lyrics by Fred Ebb. Based on the Scottsboro Boys trial, the musical is one of the last collaborations between Kander and Ebb prior to the latter's death...
(Oct 2010 - Dec 2010) - 2011: Ghetto Klown (March 2011 - July 2011)