Broadway theater
150 West 65th Street · 1,080 seats · opened 1965
Quick take
A 1,080-seat Broadway house on West 65th Street, now playing A Few Good Men.
Play · Now playing
Now playing since Oct 2026
2 h 30 min, one intermission · Ages 5+
Aaron Sorkin's courtroom drama returns to Broadway: two Marines stand trial for a death at Guantanamo Bay, and a Navy lawyer who settles every case must decide whether to fight.
The next 7 days at the Vivian Beaumont Theater.
All times Eastern. Schedule last checked Nov 7
Productions booked into the Vivian Beaumont Theater.
The Vivian Beaumont Theater is the one Broadway house you will not find near Times Square. It stands on the Lincoln Center campus on the Upper West Side, under the same roof as the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts; its productions are eligible for Tony Awards. Its roughly 1,080 seats rise steeply in a half-circle around the stage.
Lincoln Center Theater (LCT), a nonprofit, has run the Beaumont since 1985, mostly with its own productions. It is one of four nonprofits that own and operate Broadway houses, along with Manhattan Theatre Club, Roundabout Theatre Company and Second Stage Theater. LCT also programs two off-Broadway rooms in the building: the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater (299 seats) downstairs and the Claire Tow Theater (112 seats) on the roof.
The name honors Vivian Beaumont Allen, a philanthropist and onetime actress who was heir to the May Department Stores fortune. Her 1958 pledge toward a repertory playhouse here came with a promise to name it after her. She died in 1962, before it was finished.
The Beaumont was Broadway's first new house since the Ethel Barrymore Theatre opened in 1928. Eero Saarinen got the commission in November 1958, with the stage designer Jo Mielziner in charge of the interior. Saarinen died on September 1, 1961, and his firm took over the work. Previews began on October 12, 1965, and opening night followed on October 21 with a revival of Danton's Death by Georg Büchner.
The Repertory Theater of Lincoln Center, first led by Herbert Blau and Jules Irving, stayed until 1973; Joseph Papp's New York Shakespeare Festival held the house until 1977. After the 1980–81 season the house went dark. A plan to rebuild it as a proscenium theater with I. M. Pei collapsed in 1982, and the stage sat unused until November 1983.
In 1985, John V. Lindsay, once mayor of New York, formed a new board and hired Gregory Mosher and Bernard Gersten to lead LCT. They kept the room largely as built and put its thrust stage to work. Cole Porter's Anything Goes opened in 1987 and ran 804 performances. André Bishop later succeeded Mosher; from the 2025–2026 season, Lear deBessonet is artistic director and Bartlett Sher executive producer.
The house record belongs to Susan Stroman's Contact: 1,010 performances from 2000, just ahead of the 2008 revival of South Pacific at 1,000. Later revivals include The King and I in 2015, My Fair Lady in 2018 and Ragtime in 2025.
Sound was a sore point from the start. In 1995, 88 speakers and microphones went in, and a 1996 overhaul led by Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates improved the acoustics and added accessible restrooms and seating. Dark from March 2020 through the pandemic shutdown, the Beaumont came back on November 11, 2021, when Flying Over Sunset started previews.
The Beaumont is one of Saarinen's final buildings; Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill designed the library that shares its structure. On the plaza side, a two-story wall of glass and steel sits between recessed concrete columns under a heavy, travertine-clad roof. Alexander Calder's blackened-steel Le Guichet stands outside the entrance, and Henry Moore's Reclining Figure lies in the reflecting pool.
Inside, the lobby is at plaza level, halfway between the two seating tiers, with broad curving stairs to each. The stage can serve as a standard proscenium or push out into the house as a thrust, and a 46-foot turntable underneath handles the switch. On Broadway, only Circle in the Square Theatre also has a thrust stage. No earlier Broadway house had electronic lighting, and no other Broadway stage of the day came close to its 11,000 square feet.
A staffed elevator inside the 65th Street doors, beside the big mural, serves the Beaumont, and a ramp beside the box office reaches the lobby and orchestra. Wheelchair spaces are in orchestra Row O only; transfer seats can be requested. The loge is reachable only by stairs, two flights and 30 steps up. An induction loop works with T-coil hearing aids, and headphones are lent at the lobby bars against an ID with a printed address. Accessible restrooms are on the lobby level, and accessible parking is in the garage's Blue Section.
1,080 seats
The address is 150 West 65th Street, New York, NY 10023, between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue. Walk in at street level on 65th Street or from the plaza near the reflecting pool. The 66th Street-Lincoln Center station, at Broadway, is a 1 train stop (the 2 also calls late at night) and has elevators. The A, B, C, D and 1 lines meet at 59th Street-Columbus Circle, a few blocks away.
Children under 5 are not admitted. Free slim lockers take the place of a coat check, and latecomers wait for a suitable break, though some productions have no late seating.
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The closest Broadway houses to the Vivian Beaumont Theater. Walking times are straight-line estimates.
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