The company was founded in 1965 by Gene Feist, Michael Fried and Elizabeth Owens. Originally housed at a Chelsea, Manhattan, grocery store, on 26th Street, it moved to the nearby 23rd Street Theatre in 1972, performing there until their lease expired in 1984. Following that, Roundabout leased the theatre space at 44 Union Square until that lease expired in 1990. The company then moved into the Criterion Center in Times Square, a two-auditorium complex. Roundabout used the larger Stage Right space as a small Tony Award-eligible theater while the smaller second theater became the first version of the Laura Pels Theatre. Notable productions during Roundabout's tenure at the Criterion include the 1993 revival of Eugene O'Neill's Anna Christie (featuring Liam Neeson and Natasha Richardson in their Broadway debuts), the 1995 revival of Stephen Sondheim's Company, and the 1997 revival of 1776. The company left the space in 1999 when their lease was canceled in favor of a new flagship Toys "R" Us store. The company now operates three Broadway theatres – the Todd Haimes Theatre, Studio 54, and the Stephen Sondheim Theatre – and two off-Broadway spaces: the Laura Pels Theatre for new works by established playwrights, and the Roundabout Underground Black Box Theatre for new work of emerging writers and directors. The latter two theatres are located in the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre (the former American Place Theatre). Following the 2023 death of Todd Haimes, Roundabout's longtime artistic director, Christopher Ashley was hired as Roundabout's artistic director in September 2024. From January 2026, Rebecca Habel serves as the managing director.
1991–1999:
1991: The Homecoming 1992: The Visit, Hamlet, The Price, The Fifteen Minute Hamlet and The Real Inspector Hound, The Show Off 1993: Anna Christie, Candida, She Loves Me, The White Liars and Black Comedy, Rodgers and Hammerstein's A Grand Night for Singing 1994: No Man's Land, Picnic, Hedda Gabler, Philadelphia, Here I Come!, The Glass Menagerie 1995: The Molerie Comedies—The School for Husbands and The Imaginary Cuckold, A Month in the Country, The Play's the Thing, Company 1996: The Father, The Night of the Iguana, A Thousand Clowns, Summer and Smoke, The Rehearsal 1997: Three Sisters, London Assurance, 1776, A View from the Bridge 1998: The Deep Blue Sea, Side Man 1999: Little Me, The Lion in Winter
Source: IBDB