Olympic Theatre was the name of five former 19th and early 20th-century theatres on Broadway in Manhattan and in Brooklyn, New York.
Olympic Theatre was the name of five former 19th and early 20th-century theatres on Broadway in Manhattan and in Brooklyn, New York.
Although perhaps best known as the Anthony Street Theatre, the first theatre in New York to bear the name Olympic (for only one year, in 1812–1813) was on 79–85 Anthony Street (later renamed Worth Street) in Manhattan. Converted in 1800 from a former circus building, it was named the Olympic Theatre in July 1812 under the management of actor-manager William Twaits along with Alexander Placide and Jean Baptiste Casmiere Breschard. [1] Twaits and Placide had come to New York after the disastrous Richmond Theatre fire in Richmond, Virginia, where they had been co-managers of the Richmond Theatre. The Olympic was due to open with a production led by Charlotte Melmoth and Twaits, but while travelling to fulfil this engagement Melmoth was involved in a carriage accident, resulting in a severe fracture to her arm that failed to heal, forcing her to give up her acting career. [2] Circus acts continued to appear there throughout this period. [3]
The theatre was renovated and redecorated in 1813 when it was named the Anthony Street Theatre, becoming the Commonwealth Theatre in 1814 and the Pavilion Theatre in 1816 and reverting to Anthony Street Theatre in 1820. [4] During the 1820–1821 season, the theatre was the home of the acting company of the Park Theatre while their own theatre was being rebuilt after having burnt down. With this company Edmund Kean made his first appearance to much acclaim in New York in Richard III . [4] The theatre was demolished in 1821 shortly after the Park Theatre company left, following which the plot was bought for the Christ Episcopal Church. [5]
The second Olympic Theatre was built on 444 Broadway, near Grand Street in Manhattan, in 1837. It was designed by the architect Calvin Pollard, who modeled it on the Olympic Theatre in London, which concentrated on Victorian burlesque, a form of theatrical parody, often of opera or classic plays. It was built by Willard and Blake, who struggled as managers and leased it, at first, to a series of even less successful managers. [6]
In 1839 actor-manager William Mitchell took over the theatre and offered parodies and comic entertainments at reduced prices. [7] The house became known as Mitchell's Olympic Theatre. One of his entertainments was Amy Lee, or Who Loves Best? (1839), a parody version of Amilie, or the Love Test . [8] Noteworthy musicals produced at the theatre included 1940! (1840) and A Glance at New York in 1848 (1848). [9] After his retirement in 1850, it became a German-language theatre and minstrel hall. [6] The theatre changed ownership in 1852 and continued to operate as "George Christy and Wood's Minstrels". The building burned down in December 1854 in a fire that destroyed several connected buildings, across which the City Assembly Rooms extended on an upper floor. [10]
The third Olympic Theatre was located on 622 Broadway, near Houston Street in Manhattan. [9] It was built in 1856 to a design by architect John M. Trimble as Laura Keene's Theatre under the management of Laura Keene, a popular actress of the time. Keene had lost her lease on the Metropolitan Hall (Tripler Hall), and she relocated her Varieties to this theatre. [11] [12] The stage manager in the 1860s was Harry Eytinge. Many of Keene's productions had music by Thomas Baker and starred Joseph Jefferson. [11]
Under Keene's management, the theatre saw a number of notable premieres including Our American Cousin in 1858 by English playwright Tom Taylor when the title character was played by Jefferson with Edward Askew Sothern as Lord Dundreary. Keene was acting in the play at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., on 14 April 1865 when United States President Abraham Lincoln, in the audience, was assassinated by actor and Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth. Other works to receive their premieres here included the melodrama The Colleen Bawn by Dion Boucicault (1860) and the long-running musical The Seven Sisters (1860–1861). In The Colleen Bawn, Keene played Anne Chute with Boucicault playing Myles na Coppaleen. [13]
After Keene left in 1863 the theatre was renamed the Olympic and was managed by a number of actresses, including Mrs. John Wood (c. 1866). [11] The theatre closed in 1880 and was demolished in the same year. [11]
The fourth Olympic Theatre in New York was located on 143 East 14th Street in Manhattan. Built in 1868 for the Tammany Society, the building had an auditorium big enough to hold public meetings, and a smaller one that became the Olympic Theatre. The structure was topped off by a larger-than-life statue of Saint Tammany. [14] The smaller auditorium was renamed Bryant's Minstrel Hall in 1868 when it became the home of Don Bryant's Minstrels. After Bryant's Minstrels left, the theatre was leased to a German company:
Tammany Hall merged politics and entertainment, already stylistically similar, in its new headquarters. ... The Tammany Society kept only one room for itself, renting the rest to entertainment impresarios: Don Bryant's Minstrels, a German theater company, classical concerts and opera. The basement – in the French mode – offered the Café Ausant, where one could see tableaux vivant, gymnastic exhibitions, pantomimes, and Punch and Judy shows. There was also a bar, a bazaar, a Ladies' Café, and an oyster saloon. All this – with the exception of Bryant's – was open from seven till midnight for a combination price of fifty cents. [15]
In 1881 Tony Pastor took over the lease, renaming the venue Tony Pastor's 14th Street Theatre and making the theatre New York's most famous vaudeville house during the 1880s and 1890s. [16] After Pastor left in 1908 the theatre was renamed the Olympic and became a burlesque house until Tammany Hall was sold in 1928 and demolished in the same year. [17]
The fifth theatre in New York to bear the name Olympic was located at 365 Fulton Street in Brooklyn. Built by the impresarios Hyde and Benham, it was originally called Hyde & Behmans Theater and was one of the leading vaudeville theatres in America during the late 19th- and early 20th-centuries. This theatre was remodeled as the 2,000-seat Olympic Theatre, which opened on Labor Day, 1925. In 1926 an organ was installed in the theatre by the M. P. Moller company of Hagerstown, Maryland. In 1927 the Olympic became a movie theatre called the Tivoli Theatre. [18] From 1942 the Tivoli was part of the Century Theatres circuit, and by 1950 it was operated by Liggett-Florin Booking Service. The Tivoli Theater closed in 1952 and, after being damaged by a fire in 1954, was demolished. [19]
Dionysius Lardner "Dion" Boucicault was an Irish actor and playwright famed for his melodramas. By the later part of the 19th century, Boucicault had become known on both sides of the Atlantic as one of the most successful actor-playwright-managers then in the English-speaking theatre. The New York Times hailed him in his obituary as "the most conspicuous English dramatist of the 19th century,"; he and his second wife, Agnes Robertson Boucicault, applied for and received American citizenship in 1873.
John Brougham was an Irish and American actor, dramatist, poet, theatre manager, and author. As an actor and dramatist he had most of his career in the United States, where he was celebrated for his portrayals of comic Irish characters.
Laura Keene was a British stage actress and theatre manager. In her twenty-year career, she became known as the first powerful female manager in New York. She is most famous for being the lead actress in the play Our American Cousin, which was attended by President Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theater in Washington on the evening of his assassination.
Bryant's Minstrels was a blackface minstrel troupe that performed in the mid-19th century, primarily in New York City. The troupe was led by the O'Neill brothers from upstate New York, who took the stage name Bryant.
Matilda Charlotte Vining, known professionally as Mrs. John Wood, was an English actress and theatre manager.
The Gaiety Theatre was a West End theatre in London, located on Aldwych at the eastern end of the Strand. The theatre was first established as the Strand Musick Hall in 1864 on the former site of the Lyceum Theatre. In 1868, it became known as the Gaiety Theatre and was, at first, known for music hall and then for musical burlesque, pantomime and operetta performances. From 1868 to the 1890s, it had a major influence on the development of modern musical comedy.
The Colleen Bawn, or The Brides of Garryowen is a melodramatic play written by Irish playwright Dion Boucicault. It was first performed at Laura Keene's Theatre, New York, on 27 March 1860 with Laura Keene playing Anne Chute and Boucicault playing Myles na Coppaleen. It was most recently performed in Dublin at the Project Arts Centre in July and August 2010 and in Belfast by Bruiser Theatre Company at the Lyric Theatre in April 2018. Several film versions have also been made.
The Fifth Avenue Theatre was a Broadway theatre in Manhattan, New York City, United States, at 31 West 28th Street and Broadway. It was demolished in 1939.
Union Square Theatre was the name of two different theatres near Union Square, Manhattan, New York City. The first was a Broadway theatre that opened in 1870, was converted into a cinema in 1921 and closed in 1936. The second was an Off-Broadway theatre that opened in 1985 and closed in 2016.
Ellen "Nellie" Farren was an English actress and singer best known for her roles as the "principal boy" in musical burlesques at the Gaiety Theatre in London.
John Hollingshead was an English theatrical impresario, journalist and writer during the latter half of the 19th century. After a journalism career, Hollingshead managed the Alhambra Theatre and was later the first manager of the Gaiety Theatre, London. Hollingshead also wrote several books during his life.
The first theatre in New York City to bear the name The Winter Garden Theatre had a brief but important seventeen-year history as one of New York's premier showcases for a wide range of theatrical fare, from variety shows to extravagant productions of the works of Shakespeare. Initially known as Tripler's Hall or Metropolitan Hall, it burned down in 1854 and was rebuilt as The New York Theatre. It rose from the ashes under different managers, bearing various names, to become known as one of the most important theatres in New York history. It nearly burned again in November 1864, in plot hatched by Confederate sympathsizers, and burned to the ground a second time in 1867.
The Lily of Killarney is an opera in three acts by Julius Benedict. The libretto, by John Oxenford and Dion Boucicault, is based on Boucicault's own play The Colleen Bawn. The opera received its premiere at Covent Garden Theatre, London on Monday 10 February 1862.
Susannah Fowler, known by her stage name Emily Fowler, was an English actress, singer and theatre manager. Beginning in musical burlesques, she later played in contemporary drama and English classics. Although she was well-known on the London stage from 1869 to 1881, she is probably best remembered today for creating roles in three of W. S. Gilbert's early works.
Willie Edouin was an English comedian, actor, dancer, singer, writer, director and theatre manager.
Frederick John D'Auban was an English dancer, choreographer and actor of the Victorian and Edwardian eras. Famous during his lifetime as the ballet-master at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, he is best remembered as the choreographer of many of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas.
Isabella Hill, better known as Mrs Howard Paul, was an English actress, operatic singer and actress-manager of the Victorian era, best remembered for creating the role of Lady Sangazure in the Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera The Sorcerer (1877).
Daly's Theatre was a Broadway theatre at 1221 Broadway and 30th Street. It was built in 1867 and opened that year as Banvard's Museum but changed its name the following year to Wood's Museum and Metropolitan. In 1876 it became the Broadway Theatre, and finally was named Daly's Theatre in 1879 when it was acquired by Augustin Daly. After 1899, it was operated by the Shubert family. The building was demolished in 1920, after serving as a burlesque theatre and cinema.
Alice Oates was an actress, theatre manager and pioneer of American musical theatre who took opéra bouffe in English to all corners of America. She produced the first performance of a work by Gilbert and Sullivan in America with her unauthorised Trial by Jury in 1875, the first American production of The Sultan of Mocha (1878) and an early performance of H.M.S. Pinafore (1878).
Arrah-na-Pogue, also known as Arrah-na-Pogue; or the Wicklow Wedding, is a play in 3 acts by Dion Boucicault. Along with The Colleen Bawn (1860) and The Shaughraun (1874), it is considered one of the three major Irish plays penned by Boucicault. Set during the Irish Rebellion of 1798, the play popularized the street ballad The Wearing of the Green; a rendition of which was included in the play with lyrics by Boucicault. It has had an enduring place in the canon of dramatic literature on the stage internationally, and has been adapted into other media.
