Booth Theatre

Booth Theatre
Address 222 West 45th Street
City New York City
Country USA
Designation Broadway theatre
Architect Henry B. Herts
Owned by The Shubert Organization
Capacity 766
Opened October 16, 1913
shubertorganization.com/theatres/booth.asp

The Booth Theatre is a Broadway theatre located at 222 West 45th Street (George Abbott Way) in midtown-Manhattan, New York City.

Architect Henry B. Herts designed the Booth and its companion Shubert Theatre as a back-to-back pair sharing a Venetian Renaissance-style façade. Named in honor of famed 19th-century American actor Edwin Booth, brother of John Wilkes Booth, the theater's 783-seat auditorium was intended to provide an intimate setting for dramatic and comedy plays. It opened on October 16, 1913, with Arnold Bennett's play The Great Adventure.

The venue was the second New York City theatre to bear this name. The first was built by the architectural partnership Renwick & Sands between 1867-69 on the corner of 23rd Street and 6th Avenue (see picture, below).

The Booth Theatre appeared in The West Wing episode Posse Comitatus. It hosted a fictitous charity performance of War of the Roses which an equally fictitious President Bartlet attended during the assassination of the Qumari Defence Minister Abdul ibn Shareef.[1]

The theatre was recently home to the critically acclaimed Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize winning musical Next to Normal, originally starring Tony Award winner Alice Ripley and Tony nominees J. Robert Spencer and Jennifer Damiano. The production then starred Marin Mazzie and Jason Danieley in Ripley and Spencer's original respective roles. The production closed on January 16, 2011.

The theatre's most recent tenant was High, a play starring Kathleen Turner, which opened April 19, 2011, and closed on April 24, 2011, after seven regular performances and 29 previews.[2]

Contents

Notable productions

Box Office record

Winner of three Tony Awards including Best Score and Best Actress in a Musical, Next to Normal achieved the box office record for the Booth Theatre. The production grossed $550,409 over eight performances, for the week ending January 3, 2010.[3] One year later Next to Normal broke that record again during its final week on Broadway (week ending January 16, 2011) grossing $552,563 over eight performances.[4]

References

Notes

External links