Playbill’s photo series Inside the Theatre captures the dazzling architecture and unseen details of the world’s most famous theatres, taking you inside all 41 of the Broadway houses. This week, we invite you into the Stephen Sondheim Theatre on 43rd Street, home to Beautiful: The Carole King Musical.
The Sondheim Theatre was constructed by architect H.C. Ingalls and originally owned by Henry Miller. It opened in 1918 as Henry Miller’s Theatre, and the following year, was home to George Gershwin’s first complete Broadway score: La, La, Lucille. The venue has showcased stars such as Noel Coward, Leslie Howard, Helen Hayes, and Ruth Chatterton. The longest-running show to play the theatre was Urinetown The Musical from 2001–2004.
Flip through photos of the theatre below:
Step Inside Broadway’s Stephen Sondheim Theatre
Step Inside Broadway’s Stephen Sondheim Theatre
Inside the Theatre, the photo feature series that documents Broadway’s historic playhouses, continues with the Stephen Sondheim Theatre.
15 PHOTOS
The Stephen Sondheim Theatre opened on April 1, 1918 as Henry Miller’s Theatre after the London-born actor and producer. Marc J. Franklin
Henry Miller inaugurated his namesake playhouse with Louis Evan Shipman’s romantic comedy The Fountain of Youth starring himself. Marc J. Franklin
Designed by Architects Allen, Ingalls, and Hoffman, the 950-seat theatre was made after to feel like a cozy, intimate venue for audiences. Marc J. Franklin
Stephen Sondheim Theatre lobby Marc J. Franklin
Early in its history, the theatre showcased the work of legends such as Noel Coward, Leslie Howard, Helen Hayes, and Ruth Chatterton. Marc J. Franklin
One of Broadway’s all-time greatest talents marked a milestone at Henry Miller’s Theatre: composer George Gershwin wrote his first complete score to a musical, La, La, Lucille, which opened in 1919. Marc J. Franklin
In addition, the theatre premiered many iconic plays including Thornton Wilder’s Our Town and R.C. Sherriff’s Journey’s End. Marc J. Franklin
In 1968, the Nederlanders sold the theatre to developer Seymour Durst. As Durst set out to purchase and rebuild an entire city block, the theatre played movies and became a discotheque in the 1970s. Marc J. Franklin
In 1998, the theatre was renovated by the Roundabout Theatre Company and re-opened with an acclaimed Broadway revival of Cabaret. Marc J. Franklin
In 2004, the Durst Organization and Bank of America demolished the building, leaving only the building’s original façade, in order to create a new state of the art “green” theatre, designed to minimize its energy use and contribution to environmental pollution. Marc J. Franklin
Beautiful: The Carole King Musical currently plays the Sondheim Theatre, where it opened January 12, 2014. With a book by Tony and Academy Award nominee Douglas McGrath, direction by Marc Bruni, and choreography by Josh Prince, Beautiful details the life and career of Carole King.
Escape to Margaritaville, the new musical featuring the hit songs of singer-songwriter Jimmy Buffett, officially opens at the Marquis Theatre on Broadway March 15. Previews begin February 16.
With a book by Emmy Award winner Greg Garcia (My Name Is Earl, Raising Hope) and Emmy Award nominee Mike O’Malley, the musical tells the story of a part-time bartender, part-time singer and full-time charmer named Tully who thinks he’s got life all figured out until a beautiful career-minded tourist steals his heart and makes him question everything.
Paul Alexander Nolan (Bright Star), who originated the role of Tully in the musical’s world premiere at La Jolla Playhouse last summer, reprises his role on Broadway. He leads a cast that also includes Alison Luff (Les Misérables) as Rachel, Lisa Howard (It Shoulda Been You) as Tammy, Rema Webb (The Color Purple) as Marley, Don Sparks (Take Me Out) as J.D., and Andre Ward (Something Rotten!) as Jamal.
The musical reunites Come From Away‘s Tony-winning director Christopher Ashley and Tony-nominated choreographer Kelly Devine. The two will be featured in a panel discussion after a performance from the cast at the exclusive pop-up preview event at Renaissance New York Times Square Hotel on January 22.
Enter the contest below for your chance to be part of this one-night-only event at the Renaissance New York Times Square Hotel.
The contest entry period begins Monday, January 8 at 5 PM ET, and will end Monday, January 15 at 5 PM ET. Winners will be announced on Playbill.com January 17. Restrictions apply. Winners must be able to provide their own transportation to and lodging.
First Look at the World Premiere of Escape to Margaritaville
If someone said I’d be making casts for someone on Broadway, I’d have said, ‘You’re insane,’” says Daniel Scott Mortensen. Yet to date, Mortensen has applied over 400 arm casts on the string of actors playing the title role in Broadway’s Tony Award–winning Best Musical Dear Evan Hansen, about a high school senior with severe social anxiety and the lie that spirals out of control and changes his life forever.
Dear Evan Hansen
That cast is a crucial piece of the puzzle in creating Evan. “I asked [original star Ben Platt] once, ‘What’s the process like for you? What do you feel changes you?’ and he said his New Balance shoes and the cast,” Mortensen recalls. “He said those two things make him feel like he’s Evan.”
Because the cast is such a pivotal symbol, lead producer Stacey Mindich and the creative team decided Evan would wear a real cast, applied at half hour call each night and sawed off during intermission.
“I learned [the arm cast] from the girl who did it at Second Stage,” Mortensen explains. “She had seen what they had done out-of-town and they sent her a video of the person in D.C. doing a cast on [Ben]. Then she and I perfected it when we went to Broadway.
“We just improvised where to cut it, how it fit his arm, what’s going to make it easiest for somebody to write ‘CONNOR’ on it every night,” he continues. “It’s one of those things that gets workshopped along with the show.”
Every performance, Mortensen—the production’s wig and hair supervisor—meets his leading actor to apply a fiberglass cast.
First, Mortensen puts a sock on the actor’s arm, applies batting, and then slides on the one-piece cast when it’s wet. A heat-set resin acts as a hardening chemical. “As soon as it hits water, it starts that [hardening] process,” says Mortensen. All in all, it takes five minutes to apply and ten minutes to dry. (Each understudy also has a rehearsal cast custom-fit to their arm to rehearse in and develop their character.)
At intermission, Mortensen returns to saw off the cast. Hospitals and doctor’s offices have a specific machine to cut off casts, but “one of those machines is so expensive and huge that it didn’t make sense for us to invest in that,” says Mortensen. “Instead, we have a Dremel that has a saw piece at the end of it and then I have a metal ruler wrapped in gaff tape—probably 20 layers of gaff tape—and I slide that under the cast. The gaff tape is blue, so I know when I hit that because the batting inside turns blue.”
To the Dear Evan Hansen family, the authenticity is a trademark of the show. But for Mortensen and each Evan, it’s a nightly bonding experience. “I’m able to have these moments with them and say, ‘You ready? Let’s do this,’” Mortensen says. “It’s the perfect way to kick off the show.”
