Roundabout's new home, the American Airlines Theatre.
The dramatic revitalization and rising costs of Times Square forced Roundabout out of its home at the Criterion Center. The New 42nd Street project needed a non-profit theatre to move into the vacant Selwyn Theatre on West 42nd Street, thus providing Roundabout with the perfect location for a permanent mainstage home. Roundabout embarked on a $24 million capital campaign to restore and renovate the Selwyn into a state-of-the-art Broadway theatre. The campaign was fueled by the extraordinarily generous support of the City and State of New York, as well as Roundabout's many loyal individual, corporate, and foundation donors.
Nathan Lane and Jean Smart starred in The Man Who Came To Dinner, the inaugural production in the American Airlines Theatre.
In 2000, Roundabout announced that the Selwyn would be renamed the American Airlines Theatre in recognition of an unprecedented corporate partnership. With restored murals and theatre boxes, excellent acoustics and sight lines and a complete restoration of original ornamental plasterwork, the new theatre held its first performance on June 30, 2000. The inaugural production, Kaufman and Hart's The Man Who Came To Dinner, starred Nathan Lane and Jean Smart and was directed by Jerry Zaks. The American Airlines Theatre has since hosted such acclaimed productions as Harold Pinter's Betrayal, Major Barbara, The Women, Big River and Twentieth Century.
