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By MICHAEL KUCHWARA, AP Drama Writer
NEW YORK - It sits on West 47th Street, just east of Eighth Avenue, an intimate Broadway playhouse built in 1925, last used in 1987 and now brought back to life by Manhattan Theatre Club, one of the city's leading nonprofit theater companies.
The Biltmore Theatre, restored and renovated by Polshek Partnership Architects, resumes performances Thursday with Richard Greenberg's latest play, "The Violet Hour," the tale of an ambitious book publisher.
On a stage once graced by Rex Harrison (news), Mae West (news), Shirley Booth and Claudette Colbert (news), the youthful "Violet Hour" cast, which includes Robert Sean Leonard (news), Scott Foley (news) and Jasmine Guy, will gaze out into an auditorium that in some respects is radically different from what those stars of years ago played to.
Leonard and company will face a cream-colored auditorium with a sea of 650 gold-colored seats, a reduction in the seating capacity from 948 when such hits as "Brother Rat," "My Sister Eileen," "The Heiress," "Barefoot in the Park" and "Hair" graced the Biltmore stage.
Although a center aisle, decorated with a rust-colored carpet, has been kept, the main floor is now more steeply raked and the stage lowered to bring the audience closer to the action, said Deborah Waxman, director of marketing for Manhattan Theatre Club.
"This theater was specifically redone for new plays," Waxman said, although she said the first two rows can be removed for an orchestra pit if MCT decides to do a musical.
Plaster impressions were taken of the original designs on the auditorium walls and used to fill in areas that had been damaged or destroyed during the years the theater was dark.
The restorations and renovations, which took nearly two years to complete, will be paid for out of the theater company's $35 million capital campaign. Some of that money came from Biltmore 47 Associates, which put up a 51-story luxury apartment building next to the theater.
The rear wall of the theater was moved closer to the stage, eliminating some seats and creating a corridor between the outside lobby and the auditorium that reduces street noise.
A lower level with a lounge, gift shop and plenty of bathrooms (with the ladies' room nearly four times larger than the men's facilities) was created out of bedrock beneath the front of the theater.
"There are bathrooms on every level," said Waxman. "The whole goal of redesigning this theater is for the comfort of the performer and the customer."