The Magnificent Mile's only theatre has been movie house, art cinema and Broadway stage - twice. The Broadway Playhouse at Water Tower Place, at 175 East Chestnut Street just off Michigan Avenue, opened in 1976 as the Drury Lane Theatre Water Tower Place, part of the pioneering vertical mall's original tenant mix. Live theatre lasted until 1983, when the space converted to cinemas that cycled through Plitt, Cineplex Odeon, Meridian and finally Village Theatres' art-house programming before going dark in 2003. Drury Lane founder Tony DeSantis brought the stage back, spending 9 million dollars to consolidate the former screens into a single 549-seat live house that reopened on 18 May 2004 with The Full Monty, twinned with his flagship Drury Lane in Oakbrook Terrace. Broadway In Chicago - the Nederlander Organization's local arm - presented hits there including a year-and-a-half run of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, then took the room over outright in 2010 under a long-term agreement, gave it a new entrance, reconfigured lobby and modernised interior, and reopened it that September as the Broadway Playhouse with An Evening with Sutton Foster. The Playhouse completes Broadway In Chicago's downtown portfolio as its intimate house: where the Cadillac Palace, CIBC and Nederlander theatres take the spectacle tours, the 549-seat room hosts the productions that live on the human scale - Traces' acrobatic tour premiere, Love, Loss and What I Wore, Colin Quinn, Rock of Ages and a steady run of one-person shows, comedies and family titles. The address does the rest of the marketing: inside Water Tower Place with its hundred shops and restaurants, across from the historic pumping station, validated parking in the tower garage, and the whole Michigan Avenue evening - dinner, shopping, show - stacked vertically on one corner of the Mag Mile.

Type: Theater / Concert Hall

Address: 175 E Chestnut Street, Chicago, IL, United States, 60611

Website: https://www.broadwayinchicago.com

Capacity: 549

Opening Date: 01/01/1976

Accessible