Wide-Opening Spaces

The big theater news this week is the appearance of small and smallish Off-Broadway houses. Just after noon on Wednesday, January 22, with Manhattan borough president C. Virginia Fields and other beaming city officials looking on, Playwrights Horizons chairman Judy Rubin cut a thick red ribbon to inaugurate the new space. The ribbon was strung along the banister of the broad staircase in the streamlined Ford Motor Company Lobby of PH’s $27 million Edith K. Ehrman building, which now stands on the outfit’s long-owned 416 West 42nd Street plot.

One day later, interested parties visited the site at 59 East 59th Street, where the 59E59 Theaters are scheduled to bow on January 1, 2004; Elysabeth Kleinhans, whose $6 million-plus venture this is, announced that Primary Stages has signed on to use the facility for eight months a year as the first not-for-profit company to find a home at this swanky East Side address. It was just a few weeks ago that the Little Shubert opened on Theatre Row, immediately west of Playwrights Horizons. And that’s to name only the third new theater on a list of houses opening at a time when, despite the worrisome economy, there is an unusual if not unprecedented burgeoning of such venues. (Theater historian Robert Kimball surmises that one may have to look back to the 1920s to find a time when so much was happening.) Needless to say, all of this could have an impact not only on the number of shows produced but also on the kinds of plays and musicals that will be staged.

“They’re lined up like planes waiting to land,” theater manager Ben Sprecher said recently while guiding a reporter through the Little Shubert, and it seems that he’s not just whistling “Top Hat, White Tie and Tails” — the ditty from which Tommy Tune lifted the title of the short-lived show that opened the theater. Upon Tune’s closing, the folks in the Shuberts’ busy control tower had signaled Lynn Redgrave’s The Mandrake Root to land on the Little Shubert runway, but those plans have already changed. Sprecher now reports that Redgrave “can’t do it” and says he’s about to choose a replacement from a number of shows; possibilities include Allen Bennett’s Talking Heads or a transfer of either Metamorphoses or Hank Williams: Lost Highway. He’ll make the announcement next Wednesday.

Speaking of runways: The stage of the Little Shubert stretches 71 feet from one end to the other, so it does give the impression of being almost long enough to receive and send off small aircraft. As Sprecher continued his proud trek through the venue, he crowed about any number of other Little Shubert features, claiming that this is the only “full facility” theater Off-Broadway. He meant that, because it’s not a renovated church, warehouse, movie palace, or strip joint, the theater could be designed by the architectural firm of Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer to include copious fly space, an orchestra pit for 30 musicians, and a stage that can be configured as either proscenium or thrust. Navigating the 449-seat auditorium, Sprecher mentioned that a number of seats with swing-out armrests have been installed for wheelchair-bound patrons. (Attempting to demonstrate one, he discovered that it didn’t quite work yet.)

Though he noted that “nothing that can be done on Broadway can’t be done here,” Sprecher insisted that the $12-million venue is “not a tryout house — it’s a final destination.” He said that typical Little Shubert fare will be plays and went on to note that Off-Broadway is becoming a less welcoming spot for musicals. When budget numbers are crunched even at a 499-seat house, Sprecher said, they mitigate against all but the most modest musical offerings. (A house of 500 seats or more is classified differently and union pay scales shoot up prohibitively.)

In a telephone conversation, Shubert Organization chairman Gerald Schoenfeld reiterated Sprecher’s message, especially in regard to the appeal of the Little Shubert’s amenities. Calling the block between Ninth and Tenth Avenues where the Little Shubert is situated “a Shubert Alley Off-Broadway,” Schoenfeld said that the decision to build the outfit’s first new theater since 1928 was made because “we thought that we should be represented Off-Broadway.” He said that the Shuberts built now because “the opportunity came along at that site.”

The Little Shubert has bowed during a remarkable period of Off-Broadway theater construction and renovation. Playwrights Horizons has two new theaters — one a 198-seat auditorium and one, the Peter Jay Sharp Theater, that can expand from 96 to 128. At the ribbon-cutting ceremony, PH artistic director Tim Sanford said that the company will keep to its seasonal ratio of about one musical for every three plays produced on the mainstage; the venue will be inaugurated by the Richard Nelson-Ricky Ian Gordon tuner My Life With Albertine.

And so it goes on naughty, bawdy, gaudy, sporty 42nd Street. There are the recently reconfigured Samuel Beckett, Harold Clurman, Kirk, Acorn, and Lion spaces, all housed together as Theatre Row to the east of the Little Shubert and Playwrights Horizons. “There’s a need for a center for Off-Broadway theater, and what better place than Theatre Row?” said Peter Bloch, general manager of Theatre Row Studios. (He was using “Theatre Row” to mean the entire length of the blocks between Ninth and Eleventh avenues.) But, as 59E59 suggests, everything isn’t happening on 42nd Street. In July 2002, Dodger Stage Holdings Theatricals’ Michael David announced that his company has taken possession of the 55,361 square feet that had been the Cineplex Odeon complex on West 50th Street and will convert it into five legit theaters and one rehearsal space. (The Dodgers recently stated through a spokesperson that the facility will open in 2004 but would give no further specifics.)

There’s even talk that theaters will be included in whatever buildings are erected in lower Manhattan to replace those destroyed in the terrorist attacks of 9/11/01; the guidelines that the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation gave competing architects included a call for theater spaces as small as 300 seats and as large as 2,200. Meanwhile, new playhouses in the West 30s are pushing the boundaries of the midtown theater district significantly farther south. Alan Shuster, priming West 37th Street Arts on the block where the 199-seat Zipper has already become a favorite stop for lovers of the offbeat, hopes to give the Little Shubert folks a run for their money (or for other people’s money). Speaking on behalf of fellow managing producers Kevin McCollum, Jeffrey Seller, Dan Markley, and Harriet Leve, Shuster said that the building’s 499-seat auditorium will have the area’s largest stage at 75 feet.

In the West 37th Street edifice, where a three-floor condo has been rented to the Baryshnikov Foundation for use as rehearsal space, there will also be two other theaters, one with 399 seats and the other with 290. Shuster — who has been involved downtown with the Orpheum, the Minetta Lane, and the Union Square — is excited about the new site and its potential for presenting “edgier” projects when the theaters open in the late spring. He allowed that location is an important selling point for prospective renters but refused to say that it’s the be-all-and-end-all; he recalled that, when he opened the Orpheum in 1979, the area was “at a low point, but the mere opening of the place caused life.” He added that “audiences will go to what they perceive to be good.”

Right around the corner, at 312 West 36th Street, the Abingdon Theatre Company has set up a couple of shops. Talking about the three relatively small spaces (a 98-seat main stage theater, a workshop space with a capacity of up to 56 seats, and a cabaret venue yet to come), co-artistic director Pamela Paul said that they’ll be filled by both outside productions and something of a resident company. “Approximately 600 plays have been submitted,” Paul noted. Incidentally, the company is holding onto its black box space at 432 West 42nd Street.

Also still to come is Revelation Theater at 334 West 39th Street, a 155-seat venue announced in September by artistic director Leslie L. Smith and managing director David Elliott. According to a spokesperson, the opening has been postponed for the foreseeable future while construction wrinkles are ironed out. (Revelation’s production of Temporary Help ran at the Women’s Project Theater on West 54th Street a few months back, but the rest of the company’s four-play season is on hold.)

As for the 59E59 Theaters, they’re going up in the building that Kaplan’s Delicatessen had occupied since 1976; Elysabeth Kleinhans, who is president of the theatrical foundation that bears her name and whose family owned the building as part of their Delmonico Hotel holdings, retained the property when the hotel was sold to Donald Trump. She’s putting theaters of 199 and 99 seats, plus a 50-seat black box, into the space that Leo Modrcin of uRed Architecture designed. The Upper East Side location is zoned for not-for-profit organizations rather than commercial theaters, but Kleinhans said in a telephone interview that she would have geared her theaters as she has done no matter what the zoning was “because I feel there’s a need.” When Primary Stages isn’t in residence, Kleinhans will be vetting potential not-for-profit occupants with general manager Peter Tear.

For his part, Primary Stages founder and executive director Casey Childs is looking forward to the move because he’ll be able to mount plays with larger casts and more commodious sets than in the past. At a reception during which the theaters were introduced and Primary Stages’ residency was announced, Childs estimated that his budget, now just under $1 million a year, will eventually rise to $1.7 million. (He’ll hold onto the 354 West 45th Street address for other productions, workshops, and readings, since he’s got eight years left on a 10-year lease there.)

What does all this activity mean for the theatrical community? Nancy Gibbs, co-producer of Bat Boy: The Musical among other projects, says that the current theater backup makes things difficult. “You have to jump fast,” she says. “Someone gives four weeks notice and, if you don’t make a decision right then to move in, the theater is going to go to someone else. Now, maybe there will be a little give on turnaround time.” She adds, “I don’t think a lot of the new theaters will encourage new musicals unless they’re really small.” Daryl Roth, who not only produces but also has her name or initials on recently built theaters, buys into the bad news for writers and producers of musicals but does believe that, when experimental works come under consideration, “more creative spaces are part of the equation. I envision things happening. It’s only a good thing.”