At This Theater: The Booth

Opening in 1913 with the play, The Great Adventure, The Booth Theatre  was named for American actor Edwin Booth, not the other one. Interestingly enough, a revival of Our American Cousin did play there, but that's another story... 

Located on the corner of 45th Street and Shubert Alley, the venue has been home to a variety of plays and musicals. Among them were several Pulitzer Prize winners including You Can't Take It With You, The Time of Your Life, That Championship Season, Sunday in the Park with George and Next to Normal. Other notable productions include Come Back Little Sheba, Butterflies Are Free, Blithe Spirit, Once On This Island, For Colored Girls... (original and revival), I'm Not Rappaport (original and revival), and The Elephant Man (original and revival), and most recently, the Tony Award-winning Kimberly Akimbo. 

Several world famous Thespians have trod the boards here as well, including Shirley Booth, Alfred Lunt and Lynne Fontanne, Helen Hayes, Mildred Natwick, Walter Matthau, William Shatner, Solo shows from Lily Tomlin, Laurence Fishburne, Bea Arthur, and Bette Midler. Musical theater fans could have seen Bernadette Peters, Mandy Patinkin, LaChanze, Alice Ripley, Aaron Tveit and Victoria Clark.

Though we've only seen a handful of shows here, we've been to the Booth several times, and it remains one of our favorite houses. There really aren't any bad seats there.

At This Theater:

The Booth

Number of Shows We've Seen There: 7

    

      

Shows We've Seen There: Hand to God, Kimberly Akimbo, Next to Normal, Other Desert Cities, The Boys in the Band, The Glass Menagerie (2013), The Story of My Life

Our 5 Favorite Shows There: While it is true that we enjoyed all seven shows that we've seen at the Booth, five of them really stood out. And in fact, four of the five on our list are shows we saw multiple times at the venue.

5. The Story of My Life: I consider myself very fortunate to have seen this short-lived musical. I found it charming and very cathartic - I cried like a baby. Stars Will Chase and Malcolm Getz gave amazing performances, and it contained one of my all-time favorite musical theater songs, "The Butterfly." The song even spurred on the creation of a children's book! Not bad for a show that ran for 5 performances!

4. Other Desert Cities: We've only seen a handful of plays more than once (and two of them played the Booth!), and we saw this one twice. Stockard Channing and Judith Light were forces of nature, of course, but this production was the perfect example of how different actors can effect a role and, in this case, change the meaning of the entire ending with a simple pause in a line reading. But that was the case when we first saw Rachel Griffiths and then Elizabeth Marvel play Brooke - a pair of thrilling star turns!

  

3. The Glass Menagerie: The other play we saw more than once was this bold, riveting revival of my favorite classic. All four actors were simply brilliant: Cherry Jones, Zachary Quinto, Celia Keenan-Bolger and Brian J. Smith. The dream-like staging by John Tiffany - set in pools of light, smoky shadows and water - and some jaw-dropping movement (Ms. Bolger's first exit haunts me still) made this memory play memorable.

 

2. Kimberly Akimbo: Ah, this lovely musical! We laughed, we cried. And we saw the beginning of several new Broadway careers - including Tony-nominee Justin Cooley, and even more actors at the top of their game - including Tony-winners Bonnie Milligan and Victoria Clark. There was further proof that Jeanine Tesori is this generation's Sondheim.

1. Next to Normal: I will never forget the first time I saw this life-changing show. I literally ran out of the theater to call Mike to tell him he had to see it! (We ended up seeing it more than half a dozen times between us.) I've loved the work of Alice Ripley for years, and she was no less than brilliant here. And here's where I got my first look at three actors - Jennifer Damiano, Adam Chanler-Berat and Aaron Tveit - who I've actively followed ever since, so much of a fan I've become. It was this show that also began my love affair with the musical work of Tom Kitt.

The Booth Theatre Playlist: The songs that live on from the new musicals the played there...

• From Kimberly Akimbo: "Anagram," "Better," "How to Wash a Check," "Great Adventure"
• From Next to Normal: "Super Boy and the Invisible Girl," "I Miss the Mountains," "My Psychopharmacologist and I," "Song of Forgetting," "I'm Alive"
• From The Story of My Life: "The Butterfly," "1876," "Independence Day"