Shubert Theatre

More than six hundred productions were tested on New Haven audiences before they reached Broadway. Opened in 1914 to designs by Albert Swasey, it took the first performances of Oklahoma! in 1943, and of A Streetcar Named Desire, My Fair Lady and The Sound of Music, so that a Connecticut public heard those scores before anyone in New York did. The theatre closed in 1976 and stood dark until the city bought and restored it; it reopened in 1983. Some 1,600 seats on College Street, a short walk from the Yale campus, now serve a season that mixes touring musicals with opera, dance and orchestral concerts.