For nearly 40 years the Ahmanson Theatre has presented a wide variety of dramas, musicals, comedies and classic revivals, including 13 plays by Neil Simon (six world premieres) as well as the works of such leading American playwrights as Wendy Wasserstein, August Wilson, A.R. Gurney, Terrence McNally, John Guare and Edward Albee. The Ahmanson has been represented on Broadway as a co-producer of the award-winning productions of Amadeus, Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake, Smokey Joe's Cafe, August Wilson's The Piano Lesson, Two Trains Running and Seven Guitars, Frank Loesser's The Most Happy Fella, The Drowsy Chaperone and, upcoming, John Kander/Fred Ebb/Rupert Holmes’ Curtains.
The Ahmanson continues to present Broadway hits such as the exclusive Los Angeles engagements of the Tony Award-winning productions of Death of a Salesman, The Heiress, the revival of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s Into the Woods and, upcoming, Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Twelve Angry Men, Doubt, The Light in the Piazza and Jersey Boys. For excellence in all phases of production, the Ahmanson has been honored with over 50 Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Awards.
Initially under the artistic direction of Robert Fryer, then Gordon Davidson and now Michael Ritchie, the Ahmanson has played host to a veritable who's who in the entertainment world from Katharine Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor and Rex Harrison, to James Earl Jones, Lynn Redgrave and Cherry Jones. A unique, state-of-the-art 1995 reconfiguration provides the Ahmanson with variable seating capacity from 1,600 - 2,000, allowing the theatre to accommodate a greater variety of plays, from the intimate to the spectacular. It currently enjoys the largest theatrical subscription base on the West Coast in a year-round season from early fall through late summer.
