Marquis Theatre

The Marquis Theatre is a Broadway house built into a hotel. It occupies level three of the New York Marriott Marquis in Times Square, and as of October 2026 no other Broadway theater sits wholly inside a hotel. The Nederlander Organization has run it since it opened in 1986, as one of the company's nine New York theaters.

A theater was part of the Portman Hotel plan from 1973. Money ran out in 1975, and the project came back to life in 1978. Building the hotel meant clearing five older playhouses: the original Helen Hayes, the Morosco and the Bijou, plus what was left of the Astor and the Gaiety. Actors protested, some theater figures were arrested, and the US Supreme Court refused to take up the dispute. The old houses came down in 1982, and the loss set off a wider campaign to save Broadway theaters during the 1980s.

In return for adding a theater, the developers gained close to 300,000 square feet of extra floor space, and the city required 1,500 seats. The plans drew complaints in January 1985, even from the Shubert Organization, which backed the hotel: a third-floor house, a low rigging grid, restrooms far off. Nederlander had won the operating rights in November 1984, and construction took about a year.

Shirley Bassey played the first concerts when the doors opened on July 9, 1986. The first musical, Me and My Girl, ran from August 10, 1986, to December 31, 1989; as of October 2026, its 1,420 performances remain the theater's longest run. After Actors' Equity threatened to pull its members out, Marriott gave the theater its own heating, ventilation and plumbing in January 1988.

Later highlights: Victor/Victoria with Julie Andrews (1995 to 1997, 734 performances) and the Annie Get Your Gun revival with Bernadette Peters (1999 to 2001), winner of the Tony Award for Best Revival of a Musical. Thoroughly Modern Millie had its Broadway premiere here on April 18, 2002, and took six Tony Awards that year, Best Musical among them. The Drowsy Chaperone (2006 to 2007) tweaked its script so the narrator could mention the Morosco giving way to a hotel.

Vornado Realty Trust became the full owner of the theater, together with the hotel's stores, in 2018; a year later it sold almost half of that stake but kept a majority. The Marquis went dark with the rest of Broadway on March 12, 2020, and reopened in April 2022, when Beetlejuice moved over from the Winter Garden Theatre.

John C. Portman Jr. designed both the hotel and the theater. The box office is at street level, in black marble with brass railings, and escalators rise to a slim corridor opening straight into the auditorium. There is no lobby in the usual sense; restrooms are in the hotel's shared spaces. The stage sits above the hotel driveway, with a ballroom over the auditorium ceiling.

Portman wanted every seat within 80 feet of the stage. The original palette was rose and burgundy with pale wood and white plaster. Wood paneling above the balcony hides much of the lighting, and fabric on both sides of the 40-foot proscenium conceals the speakers. Side boxes were added to make the room feel warmer than the Minskoff and Uris theaters.

Backstage is tight: the wings are 20 feet wide, half the usual width, the fly space reaches only about 58 feet, and the house lacks a freight elevator.

As of October 2026, accessibility listings describe the route for wheelchair users: a door opens into a hotel lobby with elevators up to the theater entrance, and a ramp runs to the wheelchair locations. Wheelchair seats are sold at the box office only. Some seats have armrests that fold up or chairs that can be taken out, and seats for guests with hearing or vision loss are in the orchestra.

Sound-amplification headsets are free if you leave contact details. All restrooms are equipped for patrons with disabilities. A 2014 settlement with the US Department of Justice committed the Nederlanders to better disabled access in all nine of their Broadway houses, this one included.