Lyceum Theatre

Stand on the pavement of West 45th Street for a moment and let the noise of Times Square fall behind you. Taxis hiss past. A delivery cart rattles over a grate. Then your eye lands on a row of tall stone columns rising above the sidewalk, pale and fluted, like the front of a bank or a temple. This is the Lyceum Theatre, and it has been welcoming audiences since the first years of the twentieth century.

Most Broadway houses hide behind marquees and flashing signs. The Lyceum does something different. Its grandest gesture is its facade, a Beaux-Arts front in limestone. Beaux-Arts is the style taught at the famous Paris school of fine arts, full of columns, carved ornament and classical order. Here it gives a narrow city lot the presence of a much larger building. Look up past the columns and you will see the upper floors stacked above, crowned with more carved detail.

The theatre opened in 1903. It was the project of Daniel Frohman, one of the leading producers of his generation, a man who knew both the business and the art of the stage. Frohman had already managed an earlier theatre called the Lyceum, on Fourth Avenue. When that building was lost, he carried the name uptown with him. The new house was designed by the architectural firm of Herts and Tallant, who built several important New York theatres in that era.

Think about where you are standing in that moment of history. In 1903, the theatre district was still moving north. Times Square did not yet carry that name; it was then called Longacre Square. Frohman was placing a bet on a neighbourhood that was only beginning to become the heart of American theatre. The bet paid off. Today the Lyceum is one of the oldest Broadway theatres still in use, and it has hosted plays for well over a century.

Here is the first detail most visitors miss. Frohman did not simply build a theatre. He built himself a home inside it. On the upper floors, above the auditorium, he kept an apartment and private offices. And according to a well-known theatre story, he had a small window or opening placed so that he could look down onto the stage from his rooms. From there, he could watch rehearsals and performances without ever leaving home.

The story goes further. Frohman's wife, the actress Margaret Illington, sometimes performed on that stage. Theatre lore says that when Frohman felt she was overplaying a scene, he would wave a handkerchief from his window as a signal to tone it down. Whether every detail is true is hard to say, and it is best heard as a cherished legend. But it tells you something real about this building. It was personal. It was the vision of one man who lived above his own dream.

Those upper rooms have a second life today. They now hold the Shubert Archive, the collection of the Shubert Organization, which owns the theatre. The archive keeps scripts, photographs, letters, set designs and business records from more than a century of American theatre. So above the heads of tonight's audience sits a quiet library of Broadway's past. It is a working research collection, not a public museum, but it is good to know it is there.

Now let us think about the inside, which is protected as a city landmark along with the exterior. Audiences walk through a lobby of marble and decorative plasterwork, then into an auditorium that feels close and intimate. There are balconies stacked above the orchestra seats. The ornament is rich, with gilded details and painted surfaces. Compared with the giant musical houses nearby, the Lyceum is modest in size, and that is its strength. From almost every seat, the actors feel near.

That intimacy has shaped what plays here. The Lyceum has long been a home for drama, comedy and smaller productions rather than spectacle. Over the decades it has hosted many important premieres. The comedy Born Yesterday opened here in the 1940s and became a long-running hit. John Osborne's Look Back in Anger, the British play that shook up postwar theatre, came to Broadway on this stage in the 1950s. The building has seen fashions in theatre come and go.

Here is the second surprise. This theatre very nearly disappeared. In the late 1930s, during hard economic years, the Lyceum faced the threat of demolition. Many theatres in this district were torn down or turned into cinemas in that period. A group of theatre producers stepped in and bought the building, which kept it alive as a playhouse. Later, the Shubert Organization took ownership. Without that rescue, you would be looking at something very different on this block.

Step back across the street if traffic allows, and look at the facade again as a whole. Notice how the columns create deep shadows between them, especially when the sun falls low along the street. Notice too how the building sits among its neighbours, older stone beside newer glass. West 45th Street is one of the densest theatre blocks in the city. Within a short walk you will find several other historic playhouses, each with its own story and its own front door.

If you are coming to see a show, arrive a little early. The crowd that gathers under the canopy before curtain time is part of the experience. People check tickets, finish conversations, glance at posters. Inside, take a moment before the lights go down to look up at the ceiling and the boxes. These are the same sightlines that audiences used when the building was new, when the women in the seats wore long gowns and the men carried hats.

Before you walk on, stand still once more in front of those columns. Listen to the street around you, the horns and voices and footsteps. Then look at the upper windows, where a producer once lived above his stage and, so the story goes, waved a handkerchief at his wife. The city has changed almost beyond recognition since then. This stone front has stayed. As you head back toward the lights of Times Square, notice how quickly the noise returns.