Area less than one acre Architect Asher Benjamin Opened 1957 | Built 1839 NRHP Reference # 80000676 Phone +1 617-426-6912 | |
 | ||
Owner Key Brand Entertainment Production Blue Man Group and Shear Madness Address 74 Warrenton St, Boston, MA 02116, USA Similar Boston Opera House, Wilbur Theatre, Cutler Majestic Theatre, Shubert Theatre, Boch Center | ||
The Charles Playhouse, of Boston, Massachusetts, is a theater at 74 Warrenton Street in the Boston Theater District. Blue Man Group and Shear Madness currently perform there.
Contents
Charles playhouse performance
History
In 1957, the Charles Playhouse opened at 54 Charles Street. In 1958, the company moved to the current Warrenton Street location. The Warrenton Street building was originally built in 1839, as the Fifth Universalist Church from a design by architect Asher Benjamin. In 1864, it became the second home of Congregation Ohabei Shalom, the first synagogue in Boston. It was later transformed into a speakeasy called The Lido Venice, which became the Southland ballroom and cafe- featuring prominent jazz artists such as Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, Jimmie Lunceford, and many others during the Jazz Age.
In 1958, the Charles Playhouse staged a revival of O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh. The founding artistic director, Michael Murray, led the company until 1968. The founder and managing director was Frank Sugrue. The acting company included many stars-to-be such as Al Pacino, Olympia Dukakis, Jill Clayburgh, Jane Alexander, Ned Beatty, and John Cazale. The company produced Boston premieres of plays by Brecht, Beckett, Osborne, and Ionesco, as well as classics by Shakespeare, Shaw, Ibsen, Pirandello, and others.
The Charles Playhouse was regarded as one of the pioneering regional theaters in America. In his book, Regional Theatre: the Revolutionary Stage, Joseph Wesley Zeigler identifies it as one of six theatres which were the foundations of the Regional Theatre Movement.
Zeigler distinguishes the Regional Theatre Movement from the "little theatres" of the 1920s: community theatre organizations, and professional theatres that were established in towns and cities across America during the last half of the twentieth-century. The Regional Theatre Movement, in the late 1940s and 1950s, was the work of a small number of directors, actors, and producers to develop a new expression of professional theatre as an alternative to Broadway. "The early regional theatres ... started as reactions to the theatrical Establishment of their time – Broadway ... They were the new, anti-Establishment revolution."
In 1995, Sugre sold the Charles Playhouse to Jon B. Platt, who operated the Colonial Theatre. In 1998, Platt sold his Boston theatres to SFX Entertainment (now Live Nation). In 2008, Live Nation sold most of its theatrical division, including the Charles Playhouse, to Key Brand Entertainment.