As shovel-wielding celebrities such as Valerie Harper, Michele Lee, and Tony Roberts tossed mounds of multicolored glitter in the air, Manhattan Theatre Club broke ground for its $27 million renovation of the Biltmore Theatre, one of Broadway's most neglected playhouses.
"If you think this theater looks rundown now, you should have seen it the first day we walked through the door," said Barry Grove, MCT executive producer, at Wednesday's groundbreaking. "The theater was the victim of fire, theft, vandalism and extensive water damage. Virtually everything that could happen to a theater happened to this poor little theater. And yet there was something about it that was enormously intriguing."
The Biltmore, built in 1925 and home to such hits as "Hair," "My Sister Eileen," "Barefoot in the Park" and "The Heiress," has been empty since 1987. Today, its industrial gray interior and back brick wall are peeling paint. Its seats have been removed and the flooring stripped to concrete.
The theater's interior renovation and restoration will be done by Polshek Partnership Architects, reducing its seating capacity from 948 to to 650 seats.
The $27 million renovation, in partnership with Biltmore 47 Associates, is part of MTC's $35 million capital campaign. So far, $20 million has been raised by the nonprofit theater, including $10 million from the theater's board of directors, $5 million from the city of New York and $4.65 million from Biltmore 47 Associates, which will build a high-rise apartment building on West 47th Street and Eighth Avenue next door to the theater.
MTC, one of off-Broadway's premier companies, will keep its two spaces in City Center on West 55th Street, while adding the Biltmore to its family of theaters. The playhouse is expected to reopen sometime during the spring of 2003.
"It's been a long time coming," said Grove who has helped birth such productions at MTC as "Crimes of the Heart," "Ain't Misbehavin'," "Mass Appeal" and "Love! Valour! Compassion!"
"Almost as soon as we moved into City Center in 1985, we realized we needed more space," he said.
Manhattan Theatre Club currently has two shows on Broadway, both commercial transfers from its City Center spaces. They are the Pulitzer Prize-winning "Proof" by David Auburn and "The Tale of the Allergist's Wife," which stars Harper, Roberts and Lee.
When the Biltmore reopens, MTC will join two other nonprofit theaters, the Roundabout Theatre Company and Lincoln Center Theater, which have high-visibility, Tony-eligible theaters.
In explaining why it was important to save the Biltmore, Grove read from a statement written by Ruth Goetz, co-author of "The Heiress," when the theater was originally landmarked.
"If you are discouraged or disappointed in life, I advise you to go to the backstage door of the Biltmore Theatre and enter quietly and listen," she wrote. "You will hear 60 years of laughter and bravos and catcalls and you will know why playwrights say, `Old theaters are the best.'"
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