1921 The operetta opens on Broadway. With a score of themes rearranged by , the show reaches a then-epic run of 576 performances and spawns four simultaneous touring companies, becoming a perennial moneymaker for the Shubert Brothers.
1934 and 's comedy introduces the plot innovation of moving backward in time from scene to scene. It runs 155 performances at the Music Box Theatre and by and .
1939 makes his Broadway debut in which runs just 75 performances despite a cast that includes (as a dancer), , and .
1955 's opens at the Coronet Theatre. The drama about Eddie, a simple longshoreman driven to acts of brutality and despair by passions he can't understand, gets mixed reviews and runs only 19 weeks. is the director of the production, whose stars include , , , , and . Despite its disappointing original run, the play has since received four Broadway revivals: with , with , with , and with .
1960 A jealous man disguises himself to serve as his girlfriend's paramour鈥攁nd thereby as his own rival鈥攊n the popular musical comedy , which opens on Broadway at the Plymouth Theatre. wins a Tony Award for her performance in the title role.
1962 After six-and-a-half years, the musical hit closes on Broadway. It played a record 2,717 performances, and its gross receipts were $20,257,000鈥攁 record at that time for a musical.
1962 Future Tony Award winner is born. The stage comedian creates memorable performances in , , , and .
1983 becomes the longest-running musical in Broadway history. After 3,389 performances, it surpasses . The show continues on for a few more years with 6,137 performances as the final total.
1985 's classic, , is revived at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre. The play, about a group of hopeless denizens in a Lower East Side bar, was originally produced in October 1946 but was overshadowed by Arthur Miller's . It did not receive major recognition until it was produced at the Circle in the Square Theatre in 1955. The cast of that version included as Hickey, the traveling salesman, and was directed by . The same actor in the same role with the same director make up the new production.
1975 A work by a new-to-New York playwright opens Off-Off-Broadway at the St. Clement's Church, called Sexual Perversity in Chicago. The play wins the season's Obie Award for Best New American Play and playwright goes on to become a fixture in both Off-Broadway and Broadway theatre.
1999 The celebrates its 15th season by honoring the work of playwright and co-founder David Mamet. The season begins today with a double bill of The Water Engine and Mr. Happiness. Productions of Sexual Perversity in Chicago and The Duck Variations continue the season, and the topper comes with American Buffalo starring the other Atlantic co-founder .
2001 , the African-American actor who specialized in classical roles including Medea, Madame Ranevskaya, Mary Tyrone, Clytemnestra, and Titania, dies in New York. She had a late-career success in 1995's .
2003 Nearly 80 years of theatregoers' confusion come to an end when Greenwich Village's Commerce Street is officially renamed Cherry Lane after the Cherry Lane Theatre, which has stood on the short, curved thoroughfare since it was founded by poet in 1924.
2009 and co-star in 's two-character police drama, , which opens on Broadway at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre. directs the play about a pair of Chicago cops whose willingness to blink at corruption leads to disaster.
2016 's , based on the true story of a National Geographic photographer who was lost in the remote Javari Valley in Brazil, opens at the Golden Theatre. During the performance, the audience wears headphones and becomes immersed in a world created almost entirely by McBurney's voice and a virtual radio station full of sound effects. The production's two sound designers, and , receive Special Tony Awards for their work.
More of Today's Birthdays: (1904-1996). (1942-1999). Ian McShane (b. 1942). Debbie Shapiro (a.k.a. ) (b. 1954). Francis Jue (b. 1963). (b. 1963). (b. 1968). (b. 1973). Brad Kane (b. 1973). (b. 1980).
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