Roundabout Theatre Company

Roundabout Theatre Company (New York). After many years of presenting low‐budget revivals in a variety of inhospitable venues, this company became one of New York's most potent producing groups on and Off Broadway in the 1990s. Founded in 1965 by Gene Feist to present seasons of revivals of notable plays, the group first performed in a church, then in the basement of a supermarket before finding a home in a converted cinema. In 1984 the company moved to the old Tammany Hall building off Union Square. Jane Alexander, Jim Dale, Anthony Hopkins, Philip Bosco, and Irene Worth are among the distinguished performers who have appeared in a broad range of plays, including Shakespeare and classical Greek drama, but emphasizing 19th‐ and 20thcentury British works. By the late 1980s the company boasted the largest list of regular subscribers in New York and was sending productions regularly to Broadway. It next occupied the Criterion Center in Times Square, making its shows bona fide Broadway entries, though the company remained a nonprofit venture. In 2000 the Roundabout moved into its permanent Broadway home, the restored Selwyn Theatre on 42nd Street, now called the American Airlines Theatre, while still presenting shows Off Broadway at the American Place Theatre and the former discotheque Studio 54. The repertory still consists almost exclusively of play and musical revivals, some of which enjoyed long runs, such as the 1998 mounting of Cabaret.