Name theaters after people, not corporations

Ten years ago, I went berserk at news that the Roundabout Theatre Company had peddled the marquee of its new 42nd Street home as a corporate billboard.

I swore in a column that I would never again speak or type the words American Airlines Theatre when reviewing at the historic renovated playhouse formerly known as the Selwyn Theatre. And, until my editors noticed, I actually got away with it.

I admit I'm still a little proud of my guerrilla action against the loathsome commercial sale of "naming rights" in the arts, even if shaming seems a quaint - OK, pathetic - response to now-global brand-name culture.

The Hilton Theatre, formerly the Ford Theater, built from the shells of the old Apollo and Lyric theaters on 42nd Street, has just been renamed the Foxwoods - as in the resort casinos - in time for the long-delayed opening of the $50-million "Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark" in December. In the inspirational words of the official announcement of the multiyear deal, "financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed."

So the naming of things is back in the news. But - and here's a headline - not all the news is appalling.

In fact, one story is wonderful. In what we need not call an act of reparations, the Roundabout is responsible for naming its newest playhouse the Stephen Sondheim Theatre. Earlier this month, the newly reconstructed space formerly known as the Henry Miller's Theatre was lit with a marquee honoring Sondheim, the master of the grown-up American musical, who has had five revivals produced by Roundabout.

Sondheim, a famously unsentimental artist in the midst of a massive 80th-birthday year, teared up at the Sept. 15 ceremony on West 43rd Street. "I'm thrilled but deeply embarrassed," he said, "partly because I've always hated my last name. It just doesn't sing. It's not Belasco and it's not Rodgers and it's not Simon and it's not Wilson" - referring to theaters rightfully named after, respectively, producer David Belasco, Richard Rodgers, Neil Simon and August Wilson.

It is a bit surreal, of course, that the first offering at the Sondheim is "The Pee-wee Herman Show," which starts previews Oct. 26. But the Roundabout - which already has two Broadway theaters, one Off-Broadway and an off-off-Broadway space - doesn't own this one. The realtor-owners, the Durst Organization, hired the Roundabout to "curate" the 1,055-seat theater, which means both producing its own nonprofit shows and renting to commercial tenants. Pee-wee is a rental.

At the dedication, Nathan Lane said, "There is something sacred about naming a theater, and there is something about this that is right and just. I couldn't think of someone more worthy of this honor than Steve." Then, too, he said he was glad the theater wasn't named "the British Petroleum Playhouse or the McNugget."

The community has been split for years about the 2005 renaming of two of the Shubert Organization's prime 45th Street theaters (the Royale and the Plymouth) after Shubert executives Bernard Jacobs and Gerald Schoenfeld. As the argument goes, these men were lawyers and businessmen, not artists, which somehow disqualifies them from such an honor. I disagree.

Jacobs and Schoenfeld took over the weakened organization in the doldrums of the early '70s and built Broadway into the brand it is today. They did it in creative ways and, sometimes, in greedy ways, but they did it.

This is hardly the same as plastering the name Cadillac on the Palace Theatre in Chicago, which the Shuberts were tempted also to do to the Winter Garden Theatre in the late '90s. That - bless this house - didn't happen.

I've always admired Disney for resisting the impulse to change the name of the New Amsterdam after restoring the historic jewel box of a theater on 42nd Street. And though Jujamcyn, the third largest owner of Broadway theaters, gave itself a name that nobody can spell or pronounce, the company has chosen to rename theaters in honor of such genuine theater legends as August Wilson, Al Hirschfeld and Walter Kerr.

Meanwhile, the Mashantucket Pequot Tribe Nation has its Foxwoods brand all over "Spider-Man." Earlier this month, American Airlines re-upped its lease on the Roundabout's marquee for another three years.

And now I'm upset because Mos Def, the terrific actor and hip-hop artist born Dante Terrell Smith, just changed his name to "mos" in time for his much-anticipated appearance in John Guare's major new play, "The Free Man of Color" at the Lincoln Center Theater. Let's see if I can get away with never again calling him mos.