Ambassador Theatre

The Ambassador Theatre opened in 1921, designed by Herbert Krapp for the Shubert brothers on an unusually narrow lot. Krapp’s solution was to set the auditorium diagonally on the plot, producing a hexagonal seating arrangement that’s still unique among Broadway houses. Adam-style plasterwork and a single mezzanine layout give the room a quieter, more residential feel than the larger Shubert houses.

At 1,125 seats, the Ambassador is mid-sized — a comfortable fit for a long-running production. Chicago has been resident here since 2003, taking advantage of the room’s unusual geometry: the diagonal-set auditorium pulls the side seats closer to the proscenium than they would be in a conventionally-shaped house, which is part of why Chicago’s bandstand-on-stage design reads well from almost every seat. The trade-off is that side-orchestra sight lines vary more than usual; the first and last seats in each row see substantially more or less of the stage than the centers.

The Ambassador is a Shubert Organization venue on West 49th Street, slightly uptown from the central Times Square cluster.