The Sheridan Square Playhouse was an
Off-Broadway
An off-Broadway theatre is any professional theatre venue in New York City with a seating capacity between 100 and 499, inclusive. These theatres are smaller than Broadway theatres, but larger than off-off-Broadway theatres, which seat fewer th ...
theatre in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
that was active from 1958 through the early 1990s. Closed as a theatre in 1996, the theatre was located at 99 7th Avenue South in
Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village ( , , ) is a neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 14th Street to the north, Broadway to the east, Houston Street to the south, and the Hudson River to the west. Greenwich Village ...
.
History
Prior to being a theatre, the building was host to ''The Nut Club'', a famous
nightclub
A nightclub (music club, discothèque, disco club, or simply club) is an entertainment venue during nighttime comprising a dance floor, lightshow, and a stage for live music or a disc jockey (DJ) who plays recorded music.
Nightclubs gen ...
frequented by people such as
Lionel Barrymore
Lionel Barrymore (born Lionel Herbert Blythe; April 28, 1878 – November 15, 1954) was an American actor of stage, screen and radio as well as a film director. He won an Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in ''A Free Soul'' (1931 ...
,
Jimmy Durante
James Francis Durante ( , ; February 10, 1893 – January 29, 1980) was an American comedian, actor, singer, vaudevillian, and pianist. His distinctive gravelly speech, Lower East Side accent, comic language-butchery, jazz-influenced son ...
,
Eddie Cantor
Eddie Cantor (born Isidore Itzkowitz; January 31, 1892 – October 10, 1964) was an American comedian, actor, dancer, singer, songwriter, film producer, screenwriter and author. Familiar to Broadway, radio, movie, and early television audiences ...
, and
Mae West
Mae West (born Mary Jane West; August 17, 1893 – November 22, 1980) was an American stage and film actress, playwright, screenwriter, singer, and sex symbol whose entertainment career spanned over seven decades. She was known for her breezy ...
. The building was originally built as a garage, on the foundations of a church demolished in 1917 for the construction of the IRT 7th Avenue line.
The Sheridan Square Playhouse opened on May 6, 1958 with a production of
Jacinto Benavente's 1907 play ''The Bonds of Interest'' (''Los intereses creados''). It soon hosted a two-year revival of the musical ''
Leave It to Jane''. The theatre became the home of the
Circle Repertory Company in 1972, hosting their plays through the 1993-1994 theatre season, after which the company relocated to the
Circle in the Square Theatre
The Circle in the Square Theatre is a Broadway theater at 235 West 50th Street, in the basement of Paramount Plaza, in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. It is one of two Broadway theaters that use a thrust stage that extends ...
's former home at 159 Bleecker Street.
The last production at the theatre was
Graydon Royce
Graydon may refer to:
* Graydon (name), a list of people with the name
Places
* Graydon Hall, neighbourhood in Toronto, Ontario, Canada
* Graydon Hill, Edmonton
Graydon Hill is a future neighbourhood in southwest Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. ...
and
Geoffrey C. Ewing's (who also starred in) ''Ali'' in 1992.
The building became a restaurant and jazz club under the name Garage Restaurant and Cafe, which closed in 2015.
References
External links
Sheridan Square Playhouse at the Off-Broadway databaseGarage
1958 establishments in New York City
1996 disestablishments in New York (state)
Off-Broadway theaters
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