Immersive Theatre

As we have already discussed, Urinetown had its Broadway opening in Henry Miller's Theatre on West 43rd Street in the fall of 2001.  It closed in the fall of 2004 after a successful run of 965 performances.  And it was the last show to be performed on the Henry Miller stage before this theatre was torn down.

Set for One, Two Three, Henry Miller's Theatre, 1930

Actually,  Henry Miller's Theatre had sort of a complicated history before Urinetown moved in. The theatre was originally constructed way back in 1918, the design of an actor named Henry Miller (not the same guy who wrote Tropic of Cancer).  It enjoyed its golden years between 1930 and 1960, but after that was only used sporadically, and began to fall into disrepair.  It closed in the 1960s, and became a porno film theatre for a while called Avon on the Hudson. In 1978 it became a discotheque named Xenon, and in the mid-eighties, a dance club called Shout. By this time, the space was incredibly dilapidated; the theatre walls had been stripped down to their base, and all of the electrical and plumbing conduits were visible against a stained and blackened background.

This wasn't the type of theatre that patrons expect to see when paying top dollar for a Broadway show, but the Roundabout theatre company opened its production of Cabaret there in 1998, keeping all of the disgusting ambiance intact.  It seemed to work with the theme of the show. Roundabout followed that with their Broadway incarnation of Urinetown, which was even more at home in the wreckage that the Henry Miller theatre had become.

It was here that I first saw the show, and when I first walked in I assumed that the theatre designers had completely redone the house with faux finishes to match the grime of the Urinetown set.  I actually walked over and inspected the wall, trying to figure out how they had replicated the look of a dilapidated theatre so realistically.  I didn't realize until later that it was all real.

The ruins of the Henry Miller were a happy accident for Urinetown, but once in a while, a Broadway house will be reconstructed to immerse the audience more fully in the setting for a particular production.  This famously was the case for the production of Cats, which opened in the Winter Garden Theatre in 1982. The designer, John Napier, wanted the audience to feel completely immersed in the atmosphere of the junkyard where the cats congregated.  So he constructed an oversized-scale version of the junkyard (giant tires, milk crates, etc.) that extended well into the house, and surrounded several sections of seats, making the audience feel the same size as the dancing cats they were about to see.

We can't spray paint the entire house of the Brooks auditorium, but there are still some things we plan to do to increase the immersive experience of Urinetown for our audiences.  To begin with, our lighting will be somewhat dimmer (not completely dark) as the crowds enter, to accentuate the fact that searchlights will occasionally be used to make sure that our audiences are behaving themselves, and to weed out the dissidents.  We won't have an optimistic audio track of previous BRAVO shows playing in the background; instead, we'll hear only the occasional echoing dripping sounds from the inside of a sewer, punctuated by the occasional totalitarian directive issued by loudspeaker.  And we plan to use both Lockstock and Barrel as "ushers" of a sort, maintaining order, and dispensing some gentle police brutality where appropriate.

Eventually, the 57-story Bank of America Tower was constructed in the former footprint of the Henry Miller theatre, and a brand new Broadway house was constructed on the first floors of the building, christened the Stephen Sondheim Theatre.  The old facade of the Henry Miller is the only piece of the original structure that remains.