Brooks Atkinson Theatre (Broadway)

The Brooks Atkinson Theatre at 256 West Forty-seventh Street opened in 1926 as the Mansfield Theatre, named in honor of the great classical American actor Richard Mansfield, who died in 1907. The theatre was another house built by the Chanin Brothers, construction tycoons, and it was designed by architect Herbert J. Krapp, who seemed to turn out a theatre a week in the Roaring Twenties. It followed the latest trends--only one balcony and an auditorium that was wide rather than deep. According to the New York Times, the attractive color scheme was old rose, gold, and light tan.

The opening bill at the Mansfield on the night of February 15, 1926, was a melodrama called "The Night Duel," by Daniel Rubin and Edgar MacGregor, starring Marjorie Rambeau and Felix Krembs. The Times reported that there was an embarrassing bedroom scene in the second act and that it seemed to please the audience. The play only lasted seventeen performances. It was followed by three more failures: "The Masque of Venice," with Arnold Daly, Osgood Perkins, Selena Royle, and Antoinette Perry; Schweiger, with Ann Harding as a wife who discovers that her husband (played by Jacob Ben-Ami) was a child murderer; and "Beau-Strings," with Estelle Winwood as a flirt and Clarence Derwent as one of her interests.

The first moderate hit at the Mansfield opened on September 2, 1926. It was a play by William Anthony McGuire called "If I Was Rich" and it starred vaudeville/ musical comedy favorite Joe Laurie, Jr. It ran for ninety-two performances.

Antoinette Perry (the Tony Awards were named in her honor) again appeared at this theatre in a long-running play with a curious history. "The Ladder," a show about reincarnation, was disliked by the critics, but it was backed by a millionaire, Edgar B. Davis, who wanted the world to listen to the drama's message, so he kept the play running for 794 performances (often allowing people in free) and lost half a million dollars on it.

The Actors' Theatre revived Eugene O'Neill's Pulitzer Prize play "Beyond the Horizon" (1926) and it ran for seventy-nine performances. This production starred Robert Keith, Thomas Chalmers, and Aline MacMahon. The year ended with a revival of "The Dybbuk."

Mrs. Fiske revived Ibsen's "Ghosts" for twenty-four performances in January 1927, and the rest of the year brought undistinguished productions.

The year 1928 began with something called "Mongolia," which transferred here from the Greenwich Village Theatre, but played for only three weeks. This was followed by Atlas and Eva, a comedy about a family called the Nebblepredders, which expired after 24 labored performances. Finally, on April 26, 1928, Rodgers and Hart came to the rescue with a sprightly musical about U.S. Marines stationed at Pearl Harbor. Called "Present Arms," it produced one Rodgers and Hart classic: "You Took Advantage of Me. " This song was sung in the show by none other than Busby Berkeley (who also did the dances for the musical), and on the opening night, he forgot the lyrics and made up some of the most foolish words ever sung on the American stage. Lew Fields, who produced this musical, was the father of Herbert Fields, who wrote the show's book. For the next year or so, this theatre was known as Lew Fields' Mansfield Theatre. "Present Arms" ran for 147 performances.

The next Rodgers/Hart/Fields musical at this theatre was a disaster. Called "Chee-Chee," it was inspired by a novel called "The Son of the Grand Eunuch", but critics did not find this musical comedy about castration amusing. St. John Ervine, critic for the New York World, snapped: "Nasty! Nasty! I did not believe that any act could possibly be duller than the first--until I saw the second."

Herbert and Dorothy Fields next provided a musical called "Hello, Daddy," which was appropriate since their father, Lew Fields, produced it at his theatre and starred in it. It turned out to be the Mansfield's biggest hit so far, running for 198 performances. The catchy music was the work of Jimmy McHugh.

On February 26, 1930, a classic of the American theatre opened at the Mansfield and won the Pulitzer Prize for the season. It was Marc Connelly's magnificent adaptation of Roark Bradford's stories from the Old Testament," Ol' Man Adam an' His Chillun." Connelly's adaptation was called "The Green Pastures" and it had an enormous black cast. Many Broadway producers turned the script down, saying that a play about Old Testament incidents as viewed by southern blacks would never make it on Broadway. They were wrong. Richard B. Harrison, a sixty-six-year-old black, who had never acted before, gave an enthralling performance as de Lawd God Jehovah. "The Green Pastures" played for 640 performances and was also successful down South and wherever it was staged throughout the world.

During the Great Depression, the Chanin Brothers lost all six of the theatres they had built, including the Mansfield. From early March of 1932 until December of that year, the house was dark. Then, on December 26, it reopened with "Shuffle" Along of 1933, a successor to two former black musicals with similar titles. Once again the show was the work of Eubie Blake, Noble Sissle, and Flournoy Miller, who also appeared in the entertainment. Unfortunately, this edition only ran for seventeen performances.

The Mansfield's bookings in 1933-34 were sparse and undistinguished. A comedy called "Page Miss Glory," directed by George Abbott, was a moderate hit in November 1934. The cast included James Stewart, Charles D. Brown, Jane Seymour, Royal Beal, and Dorothy Hall. Another moderate hit, "Moon Over Mulberry Street," moved in from the Lyceum in 1935, and this was followed by Osgood Perkins giving an excellent performance as a playwright who dreams that he is a character in his latest drama. The play was called "On Stage," but it did not stay there for very long. It had a short run of forty-seven performances.

In January 1937, a lurid expose of a Manhattan prostitution ring on Park Avenue called "Behind Red Lights" opened and stayed for 176 performances.

In 1940 Barry Fitzgerald, Sara Allgood, and Effie Shannon appeared in a successful revival of O'Casey's "Juno and the Paycock." This was followed by "Separate Rooms," a popular comedy that moved here from Maxine Elliott's Theatre. A West Coast revue, "Meet the People," was a welcome Christmas present in 1940 and stayed for 160 performances. The cast included such bright talents as Jack Gilford, Nanette Farbares (later, Fabray), Jack Williams, Jack Albertson, Peggy Ryan, and many others.

The years 1942 and 1943 brought mostly failures to this theatre. A popular wartime comedy, "Janie," which had already played at three other theatres, moved in for a few months in 1943-44. Then, on August 30, 1944, a bonanza arrived. Anna Lucasta, a play by Philip Yordan, was first done by the American Negro Theatre in Harlem (although the playwright wrote it for white actors). It was so successful that producer John Wildberg transferred it to the Mansfield Theatre with a few changes in the script. Directed by Harry Wagstaff Gribble and superbly acted by Hilda Simms as the prostitute Anna, Canada Lee, Earle Hyman, and Frederick O'Neal, the drama ran for 957 performances.

Another hit arrived at this theatre on December 3, 1946. Actress Ruth Gordon switched to playwriting, and her autobiographical play, "Years Ago," was warmly received. It starred Fredric March as her father, Florence Eldridge as her mother, and Bethel Leslie as Ruth Gordon Jones. The play recaptured Ms. Gordon's high school days in Massachusetts when she startled her parents and friends by announcing that she was going to New York to be an actress. The nostalgic hit played for 206 perfor-mances.

A lively revival of Marc Blitzstein's proletarian musical "The Cradle Will Rock" opened during the famed blizzard on December 26, 1947. The cast included such luminaries as Alfred Drake, Will Geer, Vivian Vance, Dennis King, Jr., Estelle Loring, Jack Albertson, and Leonard Bernstein, but it only lasted for two weeks at this theatre before it moved to another house. Charles Boyer gave a powerful performance in "Red Gloves" in December 1948, but the Jean Paul Sartre play was too talky and full of messages for the public. The brilliant revue "Lend an Ear" moved in from another theatre in 1949 and played for three months. A mediocre play, "All You Need Is One Good Break," was the last legitimate show to play the Mansfield. For the next decade, it functioned as a television playhouse.

When this theatre returned to legitimacy in 1960, producer Michael Myerberg was its owner/ manager. The house was renovated and renamed the Brooks Atkinson Theatre in honor of the drama critic of the New York Times, who had retired from reviewing the previous spring. According to the PLAYBILL for that occasion, Mr. Atkinson was the first theatre critic in recorded theatrical history to have a theatre named for him.

The Brooks Atkinson opened on September 12, 1960, with a revue called "Vintage '60." Although it was produced by David Merrick, with Zev Bufman, George Skaff, and Max Perkins, it lasted only eight performances. The next tenant, a comedy called "Send Me No Flowers," with David Wayne and Nancy Olson, wilted after forty performances.

On February 22, 1961, Neil Simon's first play, "Come Blow Your Horn," opened and it flourished for 677 performances. The cast featured Hal March, Sarah Marshall, Warren Berlinger, Lou Jacobi, and Pert Kelton. In late 1962, Sidney Kingsley's play Night Life, with Neville Brand Walter Abel, Carmen Matthews, Carol Lawrence, Salome Jens, and Bobby Short, presented a realistic nightclub onstage, but the drama only lasted 63 performances. Peter Ustinov's comedy Photo Finish offered Ustinov as a writer with alter egos played by Dennis King, Donald Davis, and John Horton. Eileen Herlie, Jessica Walters, and Paul Rogers were also in the cast of this charade that ran for 160 performances in 1963.

The year 1964 started out disastrously at the Brooks Atkinson. Tennessee Williams decided to rewrite his unsuccessful play "The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore," and this time he turned it into, of all things, a Kabuki-style drama. The great Tallulah Bankhead made her last Broadway appearance in this error, and Tab Hunter, Ruth Ford, and Marian Seldes all went down the drain with her. It only played five times.

Josephine Baker made a dazzling personal appearance here in 1964, followed by the very controversial play, Rolf Hochhuth's "The Deputy," which accused Pope Pius XII of having failed to denounce the Nazi extermination of the Jews. Emlyn Williams played the pope. The drama was picketed by Catholic organizations, but it managed to run for 318 performances. Julie Harris, Estelle Parsons, and Lou Antonio were next in a comedy called Ready When You Are, C B. ! Ms. Harris was praised for her acting, but the show closed after 80 performances. A revival of The Glass Menagerie, with Maureen Stapleton, George Grizzard, Pat Hingle, and Piper Laurie, was well received and lasted 176 performances in 1965.

From November 1965 until November 1967 the Brooks Atkinson housed a series of undistinguished plays. Peter Ustinov's Halfway Up the Tree, a generation gap comedy--with the younger generation winning out--was a moderately amusing play, with Eileen Herlie, Anthony Quayle, Sam Waterston, and Graham Jarvis; and Peter Nichols's macabre comedy A Day in the Death of Joe Egg had memorable performances by Albert Finney, Zena Walker, and Elizabeth Hubbard. Ms. Walker won a Tony Award as best featured actress in a drama.

"Lovers and Other Strangers," a quartet of revue-style playlets by Renee Taylor and Joseph Bologna, in which they appeared, was amusing in 1968, as was Jimmy Shine, a Murray Schisgal comedy starring Dustin Hoffman that ran for 153 perfor-mances in 1968-69.

After a series of mishaps, the Brooks Atkinson booked "Lenny," a play about the late Lenny Bruce. Written by Julian Barry, the stinging biographical study gave Cliff Gorman a part that won him a Tony Award for his tour de force performance. Brilliantly directed by Tom O'Horgan, who also wrote the play's music, "Lenny" presented a corrosive portrait of the drug-riddled, foul-mouthed comic whose fame increased after he died. This "dynamite shtick of theatre, " as critic Clive Barnes labeled it, played for 453 explosive performances.

In 1973 the Negro Ensemble Company transferred its successful play "The River Niger" from Off-Broadway to the Brooks Atkinson, where it remained for 280 performances. Written by Joseph A. Walker and directed by Douglas Turner Ward, who also appeared in the play, it won a Tony Award as the best drama of the season. In January, 1974 Michael Moriarty gave a stunning performance as a homosexual hustler in Find Your Way Home, by John Hopkins, and was rewarded with a Tony. Jane Alexander costarred with him. The British comedy "My Fat Friend," with Lynn Redgrave and George Rose, brought laughter to this theatre in 1974, and was followed by a revival of John Steinbeck's powerful play "Of Mice and Men," with James Earl Jones as Lenny and Kevin Conway as George.

On March 13, 1975, a comedy with only two performers--Ellen Burstyn and Charles Grodin--opened at the Brooks Atkinson and it stayed for 1,453 performances, making it this theatre's record holder. It was Bernard Slade's "Same Time, Next Year"--a merry romp about a couple who meet every year in a motel for a sexual tryst, unknown to their respective spouses. Ms. Burstyn won a Tony Award for her beguiling performance.

Jack Lemmon returned to Broadway in another play by Bernard Slade--"Tribute"--in 1978, and his performance was rated better than the play. The British comedy "Bedroom Farce" had some hilarious moments and won Tony Awards for Michael Gough and Joan Hickson as best featured actors in a play.

"Teibele and Her Demon," a play by Isaac Bashevis Singer and Eve Friedman, did not succeed in 1979, but "Talley's Folly," one of Lanford Wilson's cycle plays about the Talley family, moved here from Off-Broadway's Circle Rep with its original cast--Judd Hirsch and Trish Hawkins--and scored a triumph. Directed by Marshall W. Mason, the play won the Pulitzer Prize and the Drama Critics Circle Award for best play.

Four unsuccessful plays followed: "Tricks of the Trade" (1980), with George C. Scott and his wife, Trish Van Devere; "Mixed Couples" (1980), with Julie Harris, Geraldine Page, and Rip Torn; Edward Albee's adaptation of "Lolita" (1981), with Blanche Baker as the nymphet and Donald Sutherland as Humbert Humbert; and Wally's Cafe (1981), with Rita Moreno, James Coco, and Sally Struthers.

The British play "The Dresser" (1981), by Ronald Harwood, starred Tom Courtenay as a dresser to an aging drunk actor, played by Paul Rogers, and the fascinating drama played for 200 performances. Christopher Durang's Off-Broadway hit "Beyond Therapy" did not repeat its success on Broadway in 1982. Liv Ullmann and John Neville appeared in a revival of Ibsen's "Ghosts" for a few weeks, and the British comedy Steaming won a Tony Award for Judith Ivey as best supporting actress in a play. Patrick Meyers's thrilling play "K2" was about two mountain climbers--Jeffrey DeMunn and Jay Patterson--trapped on a small ledge on the second highest mountain in the world. The incredible set for this drama won a Tony Award for its designer, Ming Cho Lee.

The next show at this theatre was the British hit comedy "Noises Off," starring Dorothy Loudon, Brian Murray, Paxton Whitehead, Victor Garber, and Linda Thorson.

The next show at this theatre was Ben Kingsley in a one-man performance of "Edmund Kean," followed by an enormous British hit, "Noises Off" with Dorothy Loudon, Brian Murray and Victor Garber, which ran here from December, 1983 to April, 1985. Later that year, Rex Harrison, Claudette Colbert, Lynn Redgrave and George Rose cavorted in a revival of Frederick Lonsdale's amusing trifle, "Aren't We All? "In December, 1985, the British hit "Benefactors" by Michael Frayn set up shop here, starring Sam Waterston, Glenn Close, Simon Jones and Mary Beth Hurt. The following December, Jackie Mason's "The World According To Me" had a highly successful engagement with the stand-up comic receiving a Special Tony Award for his galvanic comic performance. He played his trenchant political romp for two years.

In 1989, "Peter, Paul & Mary: A Holiday Celebration on Broadway" and Stephanie Mills Comes "Home" To Broadway brightened the Christmas season, as did the "Victor Borge Holiday Show On Broadway." That same year, a revival of the 1942 play" Cafe Crown" starring Eli Wallach and Anne Jackson won a Tony Award for the best scenic design of the season ("Santo Loquasto"). The "Cemetrary Club" by Ivan Menchell had a short run here in 1990 and later that year, "Shadowlands" by William Nicholson, starred Nigel Hawthorne as British author C.S. Lewis and Jane Alexander as American poetess Joy Davidman. Mr. Hawthorne won a Tony as Best Actor in a play.

In 1992, Glenn Close, Gene Hackman and Richard Dreyfuss starred in "Death and the Maiden" by Ariel Dorfman, directed by Mike Nichols. Ms. Close won a Tony Award for her performance. On October 7, 1993, the delightful Roundabout Theatre production of "She Loves Me" moved here from Criterion Center/Stage Right Theatre and continued its long run.

The Brooks Atkinson is owned and operated by the Messrs. Nederlander. It has been refurbished in recent years and its capacity of 999 seats makes it ideally suited for the staging of dramas and comedies.

Recent productions here include The Look of Love; Medea; Noises Off; Jane Eyre; Uncle Vanya; The Rainmaker; The Iceman Cometh; Fool Moon; Wait Until Dark; Taking Sides; Buried Child; On the Waterfront; and What’s Wrong with This Picture?.

Theatre Information:
256 West 47th Street
New York, NY 10036
US

Box Office: Ticketmaster (212) 307-4100/(800) 755-4000

Group Sales: Group sales: (212) 398-8370

Public Transportation:
SUBWAY: Take the N,R,W to 49th Street or the 1,9 to 50th Street, walk South to 47th Street and West to the theatre; Take the C,E to 50th Street, walk South to 47th Street and East to the theatre.

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