Artistic Director Todd Haimes’ first two decades at Roundabout have been a smash hit.
The first time Todd Haimes ever worked in the theatre was in high school. He was a sophomore at Horace Mann and a friend convinced him to join the stage crew for an upcoming musical. The reluctant volunteer didn’t feel he had great undiscovered stage talents—but in moving the scenery around backstage, Haimes found a life calling. “I had no interest in the theatre before that,” he recalls, “but after that I was completely hooked.”
The show title of Haimes’ auspicious backstage debut? How to Succeed in Business…Without Really Trying.
Haimes has succeeded in his chosen business—the oxymoronic “theatre business”—beyond even his own wildest imaginings. Clearly, Haimes knows how to succeed in show business. It’s by trying—and trying and trying again. Lose a lease? Find a new home. Lose another? Find a better one. Lose a production? Mount something even more fantastic. From a supermarket black box on 26th Street to Union Square and the Criterion Center in Times Square, Haimes has led Roundabout on an outlandish odyssey.
In 1983, Haimes was 26 and moved to New York to accept the job of managing director at Roundabout. That first year he put in regular 120-hour weeks because the company had an accumulated $2.5 million deficit on a $1.5 million annual budget and had been working under Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection for about five years.
By his 20th anniversary with the company in 2003, celebrated at a sparkling gala last April, Haimes—with the help of longtime colleagues Ellen Richard (20 years) and Julia Levy (14 years) and an amazingly supportive board of directors—had overseen a remarkable transformation. In his two decades at Roundabout, now one of American theatre’s most accomplished producers of musicals, new plays, and classics, Haimes has seen the theatre’s annual budget top $30 million and its subscriber base almost triple, from 15,000 to 40,000. And the company has developed one of the most highly regarded education departments in the country, with an annual budget about the same size as the budget of the entire company when Haimes first came to the rescue.
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1985. Todd Haimes and Ellen Richard on the day of Roundabout’s move from Stage 1 on 23rd Street to the Christian C. Yegen Theatre (now the Union Square Theatre) on 17th Street.
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Quiet Strengths
Haimes is self-deprecating, even about his business wizardry. Talking about his ability to turn Roundabout’s annual $600,000 shortfall into a surplus of several hundred thousand dollars—by the end of 1983, his first year!—he says, “It definitely wasn’t that I was a genius, because I was a kid.” But his implacable, unruffled, roll-up-your-sleeves attitude helped. “Roundabout’s financial problems weren’t all that complicated. They were just financial problems that existed because the people who were running the theatre were not financially oriented.”
Now, on the heels of one of the most successful seasons in the company’s history, Haimes begins his 21st year at Roundabout with two new homes—Studio 54 and the Laura Pels Theatre at the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre on 46th Street—to accompany the American Airlines Theatre.
To theatre insiders and longtime friends, however, the reasons for Haimes’ success story at Roundabout are simple: the bankruptcy-to-Broadway narrative was made possible by his unique blend of foresight, commitment, and energy. His tale contains elements of Homer’s Odyssey, as he, Gene Feist, Ellen Richard, Julia Levy, and crew led the theatre through the treacherous, roiling New York real estate market, ceaselessly searching for an artistic home. The saga also has hints of a resurrection story: the Board actually shut down the theatre due to lack of operating capital in 1983, two weeks after Haimes’ arrival, before miraculously rising from the dead, thanks to the generosity of board member Christian C. Yegen and his family. Haimes, however, has managed to creatively transpose every catastrophe into new opportunity.
A Modest Major Artistic Director
No one seems more surprised about this reclamation project than Haimes himself. The modest English major from the University of Pennsylvania once had modest plans for an arts management career. “I knew I wanted to go into the theatre,” he says. “But it never occurred to me that I’d end up being an artistic director on Broadway.”
Roundabout’s leader still denies any grandiose talent, referring to himself as a “nice Jewish boy” who went to Yale School of Management as a compromise with his mother, who would have preferred him attending law school. That modesty and natural shyness led him not to tell anyone that his mother had died literally the same week in 1983 that the Board had voted to close down. “I just barely knew the board members. I didn’t want to burden anyone with that,” he says.
“One of the reasons he’s so successful besides being good at selecting people and running a theatre,” claims board member Yegen, “is that he’s very good at getting people to talk and he shows interest in them. The reason most theatres have issues is because the leadership is ego driven. With Todd it’s the other way around—the ego is totally sublimated.”
“Haimes has managed to creatively transpose
every catastrophe into new opportunity.”
Haimes’ easygoing style induces people to want to work for him. Architect Robert Ascione bailed Roundabout out of problems with the fire marshals that almost shuttered the 23rd Street theatre and has been a part of every move and renovation since, from Union Square to the Criterion Center in Times Square to the American Airlines Theatre and the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre—as well as every office space and cranny in between. “You can’t help but respond to him as a person,” Ascione says. “He’s so genuine. He’s able to get the best out of people by exuding a goodness and honesty. It’s not only a pleasure to work for him but an honor.”
Haimes insists on thanking the Fates. “I recognize how unbelievably lucky I am. I don’t mean that as a postcard cliché. Yes, there are bad days. But I’m incredibly lucky. For someone who has wanted to do theatre since the tenth grade, I couldn’t have a better job.”
Ellen Richard, who followed Haimes to Roundabout nine months after he came and has stayed ever since, knows how he creates his luck. “Todd has this innate ability to make very risky decisions and make the right call. He has a real sense of a long-term plan for the theatre. When he says this is the right decision you just jump onboard, and it’s my job to make it happen.”
Haimes’ sense of foresight, of planning for a future seemingly only visible to him, has always impressed longtime board member Robert G. Donnalley Jr. “Todd’s always looking forward, over the edge,” he says. “I was scared to death that the subscribers wouldn’t follow us to the Criterion Center, but they did. And he initiated the move to the Selwyn before we knew we were going to lose the Criterion Center. Same thing with finding the American Place Theater and ownership of Studio 54: he’s looking way ahead of the curve.”
2002. Scott Ellis and Todd Haimes at a casting call for The Boys from Syracuse.
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The Play’s the Thing
Beyond the economic and real estate risks Haimes has confronted—raising tens of millions of dollars to move to 42nd Street from the Criterion Center, for instance—he seems most satisfied by the aesthetic risks he’s taken since assuming artistic control from Gene Feist in 1989. He’s particularly pleased to have expanded the mission of Roundabout to include classic musicals to accompany canonical dramas and comedies by the likes of Ibsen, Shaw, Chekhov, Miller, and O’Neill, and the new works of international playwrights like Brian Friel and Harold Pinter.
She Loves Me was his first musical leap of faith. “It was our biggest financial risk because musicals are much more expensive. That was the farthest out on a limb we had ever gone,” says Haimes. “It turned out to be this huge artistic triumph for Roundabout. That was really critical.” The experience eventually led to more look-and-leap adventures, including the biggest: co-directors Sam Mendes and Rob Marshall’s revival of Cabaret. It was one of the most complicated productions the theatre ever mounted, involving two theatre gut renovations and endless negotiations for talent, green cards, and real estate. In early 2003, Cabaret sang “willkommen” for the 2,000th time, and became one of the longest-running revivals in the history of Broadway before closing this winter.
But true to his modest form, Haimes gets most gleeful talking about the less spectacular plays, the neglected classics that he feels have always been Roundabout’s responsibility and mission to mount. He offers Anna Christie, as an example. “It was considered second-rate O’Neill, but Natasha Richardson was looking for a producer. Every other theatre in New York passed on it. We did it and it won the 1993 Tony for best revival,” he says triumphantly. Other examples of Roundabout rehabilitation projects include London Assurance by rarely revived 19th-century melodramatist Dion Boucicault, which starred Brian Bedford, and August Strindberg’s harrowingly stark, psychological drama, The Father. “We did it in December with Frank Langella,” recalls Haimes. “And people thought doing Strindberg at Christmas was the stupidest thing. But it became a complete, hugely acclaimed, 100 percent sellout for us. Funny thing.”
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2004. Todd Haimes and Julia Levy at the Cabaret final performance celebration.
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In Todd We Trust
How does Haimes succeed, besides really trying? Partly it’s the trust he puts in people, especially those he’s worked with previously. “I truly believe the success of the company is based on two things: Todd’s extraordinary instincts and his ability to attract talented artists,” says Julia Levy. “And he’s incredibly loyal.” All his artistic colleagues would agree. Associate artistic director Scott Ellis says, “Todd is sort of remarkable as an artistic director because he is never in your face. He is only there for support. I basically owe him my career.”
The rewards of this two-way loyalty are that artists have a place to come with projects and Haimes has a rich source of possible productions to offer subscribers. Look at the 2002-2003 season, for example. Tartuffe came by way of director Joe Dowling and Brian Bedford, who had teamed up on London Assurance; The Caretaker director David Jones previously helmed Pinter’s No Man’s Land at Roundabout; and Nine was directed by associate artist David Leveaux who previously directed Roundabout’s productions of Anna Christie and Betrayal.
Assassins, directed by artistic associate Joe Mantello, is another example. Haimes agreed to postpone the production because of the artists’ wishes after September 11th, costing the company hundreds of thousands of dollars. Haimes’ recognizes that artistic relationships are Roundabout’s bloodlines and must be honored over the bottom line. The production now gets its deserved airing in March.
Laura Pels, one of Roundabout’s most generous benefactors, believes one of Haimes’ most important talents is maintaining a stable staff. “It’s the combination of his vision and his loyalty,” she says. “He’s had the same crew around for years and they’re growing, too. Whether it’s Julia or Ellen or Scott, they’ve all been able to shoulder his voyage. I use the word in French because I don’t mean a ‘trip,’ I mean voyage as in ‘a long road.’” Pels takes a long pause, worthy of any Pinter production at Roundabout. “I don’t know what else there is to be said. He’s absolutely essential to our lives.”
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