user: Celebrity wedding dress designer sues over showroom fire
A wedding gown designer to A-listers like Olivia Munn and Halle Berry is in a heated court battle with a real estate honcho after a fire caused $2.5 million in damage to her Manhattan showroom.

Reem Acra’s West 35th Street studio, ​which houses 2,400 high-end couture dresses and bundles of $900-a-yard fabric, was covered in smoke and black soot from a two-alarm blaze at developer Joseph Chetrit’s neighboring building March 27.

Reem Acra at her studio working on assembling her own 12-year-old wedding dressPhoto: Rene Cervantes

The gowns, which start at around $3,500, and ​the ​luxe materials ​that go into them ​had to be cleaned and replaced, the suit says.

When Acra’s attorney Robert Stern asked Chetrit for access to his building at 245 W. 34th so his fire investigator could examine the scene, he was repeatedly ignored, according to court papers.

The couturier believes the fire started when workers from MJR Construction Services Corp. were using a torch to remove steel beams, ductwork and wiring. She says in court papers that the black soot flooded her third-floor suite through heating and air conditioning vents.

On March 31​,​ an employee from the construction firm briefly allowed the designer’s reps into the Garment District building to take photographs.

But they “did not have enough time to perform an analysis of the building’s wiring, and certainly not a joint inspection of the premises as necessary for litigation,” according to the suit.

Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Milton Tingling ordered Chetrit and his management company Cornell Realty to allow Acra’s lawyers and investigators into the building starting on July 7.

Jack Glanzberg, attorney for Cornell, said, “We’re trying to schedule access. It’s just a matter of coordinating the dates.”

Acra’s attorneys did not immediately comment.

Chetrit recently received a green light from the city for demolition work at 245 W. 34th St., which he plans to turn into a 17-story hotel and retail center.

He is also constructing what will be Brooklyn’s tallest building, a 775-foot tower on Flatbush Avenue Extension.

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A wedding gown designer to A-listers like Olivia Munn and Halle Berry is in a heated court battle with a real estate honcho after a fire caused $2.5 million in damage to her Manhattan showroom. Ree...
A Right Royal Experience
Since October, the young royals have been our guests in New York. Or at least a facsimile, in the shape of three British actors who have been performing as them nightly in the acclaimed Mike Bartlett play “King Charles III.”

But Prince William, his brother Harry and William’s wife Kate Middleton will pack it up this weekend and head back to the other side of the Atlantic when “King Charles” closes on Sunday at the Music Box Theatre to make way for the new George C. Wolfe/Savion Glover musical “Shuffle Along,” to open in April.

Oliver Chris, who plays William; Richard Goulding, who plays Harry; and Lydia Wilson, who plays Kate have been performing together steadily since the show opened at London’s Almeida Theatre in April 2014. So as one of their last bittersweet hurrahs, they met for post-performance drinks and a nosh at Hakkasan, just around the corner from the Music Box, on 43rd Street.

It was an inspired choice inadvertently close to their hearts. Like the three actors, Hakkasan, a Cantonese mega-restaurant that would fit right in on “Sex and the City,” also got its start in London, circa 2001, though only Mr. Chris had been to it.

Mr. Chris, 36 years old, is the social butterfly and foodie of the trio, he said, as he dug into a prawn-and-Chinese chive dumpling, while Ms. Wilson, who is a vegetarian, tackled a morel crystal dumpling. He has also been a de facto den mother to the rather large cast.

Mr. Chris previously appeared on Broadway in 2012, playing opposite James Corden in the comedy “One Man, Two Guvnors.” He remembers the play as a particularly out-of-the-ordinary experience because it was met, here, with buckets of laughs. (“King Charles” audiences have not been quite as vocal, said Mr. Chris.) Coincidentally, it also played at the Music Box, “so I knew everyone at the theater when I got here,” he recalled.

Remembering his previous experience in Manhattan, when he arrived in the fall he splurged on a larger-than-necessary apartment in Tribeca that “I’m still not sure I can afford.”

But it gave him the opportunity to host many of his cast mates on a regular basis. This included a particularly elaborate Thanksgiving dinner.

“Who knew that watching a turkey cook could be that interesting?” Mr. Chris asked. “But it was.”

Ms. Wilson, 31, and Mr. Goulding, 36, are far quieter than Mr. Chris. A running joke among the “King Charles” cast, they explained, is that Mr. Chris could easily not stop talking, ever.

Besides, Mr. Goulding and his wife recently had a baby, so, he said, as he partook in some sugar-pea shoots, his New York experience has been relatively low-key, save for the occasional overwhelming trip to Whole Foods.

Meanwhile, Ms. Wilson, who has family in Manhattan, has enjoyed her time enough here that she has recently been contemplating a move, she said, as she asked Mr. Goulding to pass the pea shoots. After “King Charles” ends, however, she will return home to London to film more of the television series “Ripper Street.”

When they first read the play, none of them had imagined their roles in “King Charles” would take them this far.

“I’ve gone on record saying it was always a strange piece,” said Mr. Chris, of Mr. Bartlett’s script, which is spoken in verse.

“Even on the first night, we weren’t sure what we had,” said Mr. Goulding, who had originally gone in for the role of William, when the director, Rupert Goold, suggested he read for Harry.

“It’s kind of like this big, beautiful, graceful narwhal,” said Mr. Chris, apropos of not much, referring to the sleek-tusked whale that, he explained, glides through the ocean.

“What’s a narwhal?” asked Ms. Wilson, laughing at Mr. Chris’ eccentric description.

An iPhone was pulled out to show Ms. Wilson, who wasn’t completely convinced about the comparison. But it didn’t matter; it was time to order dessert.

Write to Marshall Heyman at marshall.heyman@wsj.com
Please write a summary below.


assistant: The actors who play Prince William, Prince Harry and Kate Middleton in ‘King Charles III’ get ready to end their roles as the young royals as the show nears the end of its Broadway run.