Broadway theater
214 West 43rd Street · 1,622 seats · opened 1998
Quick take
A 1,622-seat Broadway house on West 43rd Street, home to Harry Potter and the Cursed Child since 2021.
Play · Now playing
Now playing since Apr 2018
2 h 55 min, one intermission · Ages 8+
A fantasy play that follows Harry Potter as a father: his son Albus teams up with Draco Malfoy's son, Scorpius, and a stolen Time-Turner sends them into the past.
The next 7 days at the Lyric Theatre.
All times Eastern. Schedule last checked Nov 7
The Lyric Theatre is a big Broadway house made for large musicals, with 1,622 seats on three levels and a size now comparable to the Majestic or the St. James. ATG Entertainment runs it. The city and state of New York own the building; New 42nd Street, the nonprofit that looks after the block's old playhouses, developed it.
The name is older than the building. The present theater opened in 1998 on the sites of two earlier houses, the Lyric of 1903 and the Apollo of 1920, and reuses pieces of both.
The first Lyric opened on October 12, 1903, with Richard Mansfield in Old Heidelberg. Built for the composer Reginald De Koven and run by the Shubert brothers, it later hosted the Marx Brothers in The Cocoanuts (1925). The Selwyn brothers opened the Apollo next door in 1920. Both ended up showing films, the Lyric from 1934.
New York State took over the sites in 1990, the year New 42nd Street was formed to revive them. Garth Drabinsky and his Canadian company Livent leased the pair, and in 1996 work began on merging them into one musical house. Both interiors were dismantled and about 190 tons of ornamental plaster were restored off-site for reuse. With Ford Motor Company as sponsor, the Ford Center for the Performing Arts was dedicated on December 12, 1997. Ragtime gave the first preview on December 26 and opened officially in January 1998.
Livent filed for bankruptcy in November 1998, and control passed to SFX Entertainment, Clear Channel Entertainment and then Live Nation. At first the house held 1,821 seats, second on Broadway only to the Gershwin, and its size drew complaints after several shows there lost money. Longer stays included a 42nd Street revival (2001 to 2005, 1,524 performances) and Young Frankenstein (2007 to 2009). Sponsors renamed it the Hilton Theatre in 2005 and the Foxwoods Theatre in 2010. Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark opened on June 14, 2011, after roughly seven months of previews, then a Broadway record.
Ambassador Theatre Group, now ATG Entertainment, signed a long lease in May 2013 and restored the Lyric name in 2014. A 2017–2018 renovation for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child moved the main entrance to 43rd Street and cut the seat count to 1,622. That play opened on April 22, 2018; as of October 2026, no production has run longer in this building.
The Landmarks Preservation Commission put off a ruling on the Lyric in 1987 and dropped it from consideration in February 2016, citing the state preservation rules that already cover the block. The theater is not a city landmark.
Richard Lewis Blinder of Beyer Blinder Belle designed the theater with Peter H. Kofman; Roger Morgan Studio did the interiors. Victor Hugo Koehler's 1903 front on 43rd Street survives: three arched center doors, carved Music and Drama panels over the side doors, busts of W. S. Gilbert, Arthur Sullivan and De Koven, heads of Apollo, Athena and Hermes in round windows, and a copper cornice. On 42nd Street, the old Lyric's slim three-story arch still serves as an entrance. The auditorium and the 100-foot stage house behind them are new, clad in windowless precast concrete.
The 43rd Street doors open into a domed oval rotunda, where an Italian-marble stair splits in two on its way up to a medallion of Zeus rescued from the old Lyric's proscenium. The mosaic floor, 172,800 marble pieces, repeats the comedy and tragedy masks from the facade. The auditorium borrows from the Apollo: its ceiling dome, set in a new plaster ring; its side boxes; three small gilded domes above the top balcony; and its proscenium arch, stretched from a 30-foot to a 50-foot opening. The stage is about 55 feet deep and 100 feet wide.
Step-free entry is on 42nd Street, where an elevator serves the orchestra and dress circle; both levels have wheelchair locations, which you request when buying. The balcony has no elevator. Accessible restrooms are on the dress circle level.
The house uses GalaPro, a phone app offering captions, audio description and subtitles in seven languages, and lends assistive listening devices. KultureCity has certified it as sensory inclusive, with quiet areas and sensory bags. Large luggage is not allowed inside.
1,622 seats
The box office and main doors are at 214 West 43rd Street, near Times Square; the second entrance is at 213 West 42nd Street. The Todd Haimes Theatre is the western neighbor; between the Lyric and 42nd Street stand the New Victory and Times Square theaters, with the New Amsterdam across the street.
The closest subway stops, Times Square-42nd Street (1, 2, 3, 7, N, Q, R, W and S) and 42nd Street-Port Authority Bus Terminal (A, C and E), form one accessible complex. The B, D, F and M trains stop farther east, at 42nd Street-Bryant Park. For the stage door, leave by the 43rd Street doors and look left for a glass door under the carved word Drama.
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The closest Broadway houses to the Lyric Theatre. Walking times are straight-line estimates.
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