Nederlander Theatre

The **David T. Nederlander Theatre** (formerly the **National Theatre**, the **Billy Rose Theatre**, and the **Trafalgar Theatre**; commonly shortened to the **Nederlander Theatre**) is a 1,232-seat Broadway theater at 208 West 41st Street in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. It is one of the Nederlander Organization's nine Broadway theaters. Since 1980 it has been named for 20th century American theater impresario David Tobias Nederlander. It is the southernmost Broadway theater in the Theater District.

## History

The commonly held history is that Walter C. Jordan built the theatre at a cost of $950,000. It opened September 1, 1921, as the *National Theatre* and seated 1,200 people. The Shubert Organization owned the venue until 1956, when Harry Fromkes purchased it as part of the settlement of the Shubert antitrust case. Fromkes died after a fall from his apartment, and his estate sold it to Billy Rose, who renamed it after himself in 1959. The Nederlander Organization purchased the venue in 1979 and briefly renamed it the Trafalgar Theatre before dubbing it the *David T. Nederlander Theatre* in 1980. It housed the Times Square Church before Nederlander sold the Mark Hellinger Theatre to the church's pastor, David Wilkerson. During the 2008 restoration of the venue, the owners discovered records indicating that the theatre was constructed as a carpenter's shop in 1920 before being converted to an entertainment venue the following year. This would mean that the Nederlander joins the Broadway and Winter Garden theatres as the only Broadway houses not originally built as such.

The venue has hosted a wide variety of shows, including the Mercury Theatre production of William Shakespeare's *Julius Caesar*, Edmond Rostand's *Cyrano de Bergerac*, Noël Coward's *Private Lives*, Edward Albee's *Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?* and the Tony award-winning *Rent*. Lena Horne won a 1981 Tony Award for her performance at the Nederlander in her eponymous *Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music*.

When *RENT*, set in the Alphabet City neighborhood of Manhattan's East Village, opened in 1996, the theater underwent remodeling of the façade and interior to resemble a downtown nightclub. When Rent closed in 2008, refurbishing quickly got underway for the new show, a revival of *Guys and Dolls* starring Oliver Platt and Lauren Graham. The show played only 147 performances and was a box office failure when it closed on June 14, 2009. The Neil Simon plays *Brighton Beach Memoirs* and *Broadway Bound* were to premiere at the theatre in the fall and perform alternating shows. However, due to weak ticket sales for *Brighton Beach Memoirs*, the show closed November 1, 2009, and the planned production of *Broadway Bound* was canceled.

The musical *Million Dollar Quartet* made its Broadway debut at the theatre April 11, 2010, and played through June 12, 2011. Following MDQ, *Newsies* opened for a limited engagement, which was subsequently converted to an open run. *Newsies* closed August 24, 2014, and began touring in October. The musical *Honeymoon in Vegas* began previews November 18, 2014, with its official opening on January 15, 2015. *Amazing Grace,* played from the summer through the fall of 2015.

A new musical, *Disaster!*, by Seth Rudetsky and Jack Plotnick, began performances on February 9, 2016.

On March 12, 2020 the theater closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It reopened on September 25, 2021 with performances of *The Lehman Trilogy.*

## Raggedy Ann: The Musical Adventure

Although Birch was a veteran choreographer, she had never directed a Broadway show, and Gibson noted that she remarked to Snyder, "If I screw this one up, I'm all through in New York." As the pressures mounted, Birch stopped listening to Gibson altogether as she found herself contending with an assortment of people vying for her attention, many also trying to provide creative input.

The show went into previews on October 3, and officially opened on October 16, 1986, at the Nederlander Theatre, running for 15 previews and 5 performances before abruptly closing on October 19. An audio recording of one of these shows has been circulating among musical theater collectors for decades, although the precise date is unknown. The only known TV marketing focused on audience critiques rather than providing any glimpse of the show.

The press remained silent until the official opening. Austin recalled, "I cannot remember an audience that I felt rejected the show. The reviews on opening night were shocking to us all." Snyder elaborated, “It was just one bad review after another." Beneath a headline declaring the show was a "child's garden of bad dreams," The North Jersey Record's Robert Feldberg snidely quipped that Gibson "makes *Macbeth* look like *Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm*." The Headline from the New York Post's Howard Kissel was "Throw It Back Into the Rag Bag," and he summarized by stating, "Any little girl who prizes her own Raggedy Ann doll can probably tell better stories about it than this disjointed and distasteful musical." They weren't even safe from scorn from the New Jersey Pennysaver, which complained that it boasted "an uncurable case of the *cutes* coupled with an unnerving rush of boredom."

Austin remarked that the show's future hinged on the New York Times review, which was assigned to Frank Rich, who's disparagingly known as "The Butcher of Broadway." He declared that the play "is loaded with psychoanalytic subtext - sex, death, and even a holocaustal mass grave are always peeking through Marcella's nightmares - but the author apparently considers it beneath him to wrap his highfalutin message in a coherent, let alone exciting, story." Rich went on to attack the "faceless pop songs" that made up Raposo's score, as well as Birch's direction and choreography, remarking that the Act I finale was "what Busby Berkeley might have done if he had only a half-dozen dancers and several celestial Hula-Hoops at his disposal."

The Philadelphia Daily News critic, Nels Nelson, fired back squarely at Rich and denounced other reviewers for their unfair and hostile vilification, praising the show for having an "intellectual equilibrium" and providing "more than a mere suggestion of the seamy underside of the universe." Nelson proclaimed it "bright, tuneful, funny and such wonderful nonsense that I would have happily sat through it again." He would never get that opportunity because the final performance occurred one day before his review was published. The show's closure only garnered a two-line blurb in The New York Times.

Birch summarized the production in an interview published a few days earlier:

"This is an unusual, even bizarre, piece for the Broadway theater, but it has been done by three people who really care - myself, Bill Gibson and Joe Raposo - and a score of actors, a lot of whom are overqualified for what we've asked them to do. Those actors believe in this piece, and that's gratifying." -Patricia Birch