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The Morosco Theatre was a Broadway theatre located at 217 West 45th Street in the heart of the theater district in midtown-Manhattan, New York, United States.

It was designed by architect Herbert J. Krapp for the Shuberts, who constructed it for Oliver Morosco in gratitude for his helping them break the monopoly of the Theatrical Syndicate. It had approximately 955 seats. It opened on February 5, 1917 with the musical Canary Cottage, with a book by Morosco and a score by Earl Carroll.

The Shuberts lost the building in the Depression, and City Playhouses, Inc. bought it at auction in 1943. It was sold in 1968 to Bankers Trust Company and -- after a massive "Save the Theatres" protest movement mounted by various actors and other theatrical folk failed -- was razed in 1982, along with the Helen Hayes, the Bijou, and remnants of the Astor and the Gaiety theatres; it was replaced by the highrise 49-story Marriott Marquis hotel and Marquis Theatre.

Bob Martin's musical comedy The Drowsy Chaperone makes mention of the Morosco Theatre. The title is a reference to a fictional show which, according to the narrative, opened at the Morosco in 1928. The narrator goes on to say that the Morosco was demolished in 1982, and a hotel was built in its place. That hotel, of course, is the Marriott Marquis, which houses the Marquis Theatre, where The Drowsy Chaperone opened in 2006.

Notable productions

• Happy New Year, a musical adaptation of the Philip Barry play Holiday with songs by Cole Porter, 1980
• The Lady From Dubuque by Edward Albee, 1980
• Da by Hugh Leonard, 1978
• Side By Side By Sondheim, a musical revue, 1978
• Golda by William Gibson, 1977
• The Shadow Box by Michael Cristofer, 1977
• A Party with Betty Comden and Adolph Green, a musical revue, 1977
• The Innocents by William Archibald, 1976
• Let My People Come by Earl Wilson Jr., 1976
• The Eccentricities of a Nightingale by Tennessee Williams, 1976
• The Norman Conquests by Alan Ayckbourn, 1975
• In Praise of Love by Terence Rattigan, 1974
• A Moon for the Misbegotten by Eugene O'Neill, 1973
• The Changing Room by David Storey, 1973
• Butley by Simon Gray, 1972
• And Miss Reardon Drinks a Little by Paul Zindel, 1971
• Forty Carats by Jay Allen, 1968
• The Price by Arthur Miller, 1968
• Don't Drink the Water by Woody Allen, 1966
• Mary, Mary by Jean Kerr, 1964
• Alfie! by Bill Naughton, 1964
• Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov, 1964
• The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore by Tennessee Williams, 1963
• The Best Man by Gore Vidal, 1960
• The Visit by Friedrich Dürrenmatt, 1958
• Time Remembered by Jean Anouilh, 1957 - 1958
• Major Barbara by George Bernard Shaw, 1956
• Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams, 1955
• The Deep Blue Sea by Terence Rattigan, 1952
• Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller, 1949
• The Voice of the Turtle by John William Van Druten, 1943
• Blithe Spirit a farce by Noël Coward, with Clifton Webb, 1941
• Old Acquaintance by John Van Druten, 1940
• Our Town by Thornton Wilder, 1938
• A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen, 1937
• Camille by Alexandre Dumas, fils, 1932
• Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekhov, 1929
• The Drowsy Chaperone by Julie Gable and Sidney Stein, 1928
• The Letter by W. Somerset Maugham, 1927
• Craig's Wife by George Kelly, 1925
• Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini, 1923
• Beyond the Horizon by Eugene O'Neill, 1920

External links

• Morosco Theatre at the Internet Broadway Database

40°45′29″N 73°59′08″W / 40.75801°N 73.98567°W / 40.75801; -73.98567

• Broadway theatres
• Former theatres of Manhattan
• 1917 architecture
• 1917 establishments in the United States