he Eugene O’Neill Theatre is a Broadway theater in midtown-Manhattan. The theatre is located on 230 West 49th Street, between Broadway and Eighth Avenues. Architect Herbert J. Krapp designed the theatre in the 1920s, and it opened on November 24, 1925 with the musical Mayflowers. Twenty years later in 1945, the theatre was renamed the Coronet, before renaming it the Eugene O’Neill Theatre in 1959.
The theatre has put on some of the most famous Broadway productions throughout its illustrious history. In the 1930s and 1940s, plays such as Tobacco Road, which ran for an astounding 3,182 performances, as well as Dream Girl, and All My Sons were put on at the theatre as it began to gain its fame. The 1950s brought in such plays as The Children’s Hour, The Little Hut, The Bad Seed; A Memory of Two Mondays, and The Waltz of the Toreadors. By the 1960s, the fame of the theatre brought in the original The Odd Couple, which won a myriad of Tony Awards as the theatre’s aura began to grow.
The theatre has long been a launching pad for many of playwright Neil Simon as he purchased the theatre in the late 1960s. After his purchase of the theatre, a long string of Simon plays were staged at the theatre, from 1969 through 1975 when Yentl was put on. In 1982, Jujamcyn Theatres purchased the theatre from Neil Simon, and they have operated the theatre to this day. After a number of shows were put on at the theatre, Grease! found itself as the first show, which went on for any period of time. Grease! had a 1,503 performance run at the theatre. On January 8, 1996, Grease! gained quite a bit of infamy for being the only play on Broadway as a blizzard kept the rest of the theatres dark.
The twenty-first century has seen such plays as the theatre adaptation of the film The Fully Monty, which ushered in a new era of the musical comedy to the theatre. After a number of years of musical comedies, 2005 brought Sweeney Todd to the stage for a 349 performance run. The end of the decade has brought three wildly successful plays to the theatre, starting with Spring Awakening, followed by Fela!, a show about the Nigerian musician Fela Kuti. Currently, The Book of Mormon adorns the stage, which has been one of the most highly critically acclaimed and financially successful plays of all time.
