The Walter Kerr Theatre is a legitimate Broadway theatre. Located at 219 West 48th Street, it is owned and operated by Jujamcyn Theaters. One of the smaller auditoriums in the theatre district, it seats 975.
The theater was designed by Herbert J. Krapp and built as the Ritz Theatre in 1921 by the Shubert family. It was operated by ABC as a radio and then television studio between 1943 and 1965, and remained vacant from 1965 to 1971, when it reopened with the musical Soon, book by Martin Duberman, which closed after three performances. Although it housed a number of productions in the next two years, it remained dark from 1973 to 1983. The last production to staged at the Ritz was Chu Chem. After it closed, Jujamcyn hired EverGreene Architectural Arts to renovate the interior. In 1990 it reopened, now renamed for theatre critic Walter Kerr, with August Wilson's The Piano Lesson. Since then it has housed six winners of the Tony Award for Best Play: Angels in America: Millennium Approaches, Angels in America: Perestroika, Love! Valour! Compassion!, Proof, Take Me Out, and Doubt.
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The Broadway revival of A Little Night Music, starring Catherine Zeta-Jones and Angela Lansbury, achieved the box office record for the Walter Kerr Theatre. The production grossed $1,031,543 over eight performances, for the week ending January 03, 2010.[1]
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