Martin Beck Theatre

Martin Beck Theatre, New York, in West 45th Street, between 8th and 9th Avenues. With a seating capacity of 1,280, it opened in 1924 with Madame Pompadour, and has since housed many other successful musicals. It was also used by the Theatre Guild for Robert Nichols and Maurice Browne's Wings over Europe (1928); for the first American production of Shaw's The Apple Cart (1930); and by the Group Theatre for its initial productions, Green's The House of Connelly and Sherwood's Reunion in Vienna (both 1931). Katharine Cornell was seen in 1934–5 in a repertory which included Romeo and Juliet, Besier's The Barretts of Wimpole Street, and Buckstone's The Flowers of the Forest. Other productions included Maxwell Anderson's Winterset (1935) and High Tor (1937), Lillian Hellman's Watch on the Rhine (1941), O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh (1946), and John Patrick's The Teahouse of the August Moon (1953). Edward Albee's adaptation of The Ballad of the Sad Café (1963), from a novella by Carson McCullers, and his own plays A Delicate Balance (1966) and All Over (1971) were produced here. Later came Alan Bennett's Habeas Corpus (1975) with Donald Sinden, a revival of Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes (1981) starring Elizabeth Taylor and Maureen Stapleton, and the musical The Rink (1984).