Paper Magazine

(Click Picture for larger view)

The Boxer
By Drew Elliot, photo by Alexander Thompson

“I would like to make the term ‘dinner theater’ cool,” says Simon Hammerstein, discussing The Box, his new eatery-cum-salon-cum-theatrical palace nestled on Chrystie Street in Manhattan. The venue will open this month and just might revolutionize nightlife in the process. Walking through the door, it feels like discovering an old dance-hall dinner theater that has not been touched for a century, one where the curtain has never been raised. Plastered in fine wallpaper and appointed with large doors from insane asylums, lighting fixtures from a deteriorated Upper East Side department store and from 1920s Manhattan subway stations, The Box itself is as much a part of the entertainment as the actors who will perform within it.

Hammerstein has the street-smarts and background to back up a new New York venue. The grandson of renowned lyricist Oscar, he wrote a “Declaration of Independence” at age 16, which he handed off to his parents. It relieved him of finishing any schooling, and he has been on his own ever since. The British-born bon vivant decided on a life devoted to the stage, moved to America and wound up working for several important off-off Broadway playhouses, including The Flea and The SoHo Repertory Theater. His design sensibility with The Box is informed by theaters of the past, among them The Birdcage, a 19th-century vaudeville theater in Tombstone, Arizona, which featured runways to show fashions of the Wild West and bullet holes from famous pistol battles. Also influential were the Lower East Side’s Marm Mendelbaum and Harry Hill’s, an old-time salon and speakeasy, respectively. In his aid, he’s enlisted producers, bookers and nightlife types (The Donkey Show creator Randy Weiner, Wooster Group producer Richard Kimmel and nightlife impresario Serge Becker). There will be a surprise happening at 2 a.m.-every single night. “I’m paying rent seven nights a week,” the 28 year old says. When asked what he would like to see on his stage, Hammerstein exclaims: “Frank Sinatra and the Wu-Tang Clan. We have over 2,000 ideas on paper and we want to mix highbrow and lowbrow.” And when asked what’s missing in New York nightlife, he replies unequivocally: “Surprise and spectacle.” Hammerstein’s theater is as yet an enigma, but given his intelligence and passion for nightlife, it’s sure to pass into the pantheon of legendary New York nightspots.
   
  

The New York Observer:
Dec. 18, 2006

The Hammerstein Family
By Sara Vilkomerson

In my generation, no one knows Hammerstein— maybe I’ll get, ‘Are you related to the ballroom?’” said Simon Hammerstein as he sat in his soon-to-be-opened supper club, the Box, on the Lower East Side. “I like to say, ‘Yes, I am the ballroom’s great-great-grandson.’”

The Hammerstein Ballroom is actually named for Oscar Hammerstein I—who constructed it as the Manhattan Opera House in 1906—not his far more famous grandson, Oscar Hammerstein II, of the duo Rodgers and Hammerstein, who wrote Carousel, South Pacific, The King and I, Oklahoma! and The Sound of Music, and who died in 1960.
Simon Hammerstein is that Oscar Hammerstein’s grandson, but says it’s the first Oscar Hammerstein’s vision he looks to for inspiration.
“I’d like to think I’m following in his footsteps, actually. He was the man,” Mr. Hammerstein said. “He was 11 years old and in Germany when his mother died—he inherited his love of opera from her—and his father was abusive. So he took his violin and sold it for a ticket to America. Isn’t that amazing?”
As Simon Hammerstein turns 29 next week, he’s preparing to open The Box—a modern take on the old-fashioned supper club—in February.
When Oscar Hammerstein (the first) arrived in America in 1863, he got a job sweeping floors at a cigar factory before eventually taking out a patent on a machine that could roll cigars. He built the Harlem Opera House in 1889 and, to lure the crowds away from the Metropolitan Opera House, built an opera house in Manhattan. “They eventually bribed him to stop competing,” said Mr. Hammerstein. “They gave him a million dollars—which was a fortune at the turn of the century. He went to London and built the London Opera House.”
Mr. Hammerstein, who is single and lives in a loft on the Lower East Side, was giving a reporter a tour of The Box, a 160-seat venue in a 5,000-square-foot former sign factory on Chrystie Street. He was wearing a cream sweater under a chocolate-colored blazer with tan trousers and sneakers, a cigarette dangling from his lips. He sported a full mop of dark, unruly hair and a youthful beard partly concealing a sheepish, yet also mischievous, smile. A budding theater director, Mr. Hammerstein is also a nightlife impresario in the making.
“One day it dawned on me that being a director is having your whole life depend on what The New York Times says about you,” he said. “It’s not a life.”
His first venture is thick with mood: The Box contains nooks and crannies filled with 1920’s artifacts; the walls are covered in mismatched vintage wallpaper; the small stage is draped with a heavy mustard-colored velvet curtain. “I want it to look as if you’re in the home of someone a bit eccentric,” he said.

Born in England, Mr. Hammerstein has an accent that dips between posh Brit and American. (“I’d never be an actor—I mumble too much.”) Growing up with the Hammerstein surname, he said, was less pressure for him than it was for his father, James.
“My father had those big shoes to fill,” he said. “That was sort of overwhelming for his generation.” James Hammerstein had followed his father into the theater, acting as the stage manager on the first-ever production of Damn Yankees and then directing much of his father’s work. He died in 1999. “My father was very thoughtful and smart and took theater very seriously,” said Mr. Hammerstein. “He loved seeing shows and then talking about them afterwards.”
James Hammerstein, along with his wife, the British playwright and actor Geraldine Sherman, would take young Simon to Broadway. “I was jealous of my parents,” he said. “They were much cooler than me. Normally, one is embarrassed by your parents. Not me. Any girl I was interested in would end up chatting with my mom.”
Mr. Hammerstein left school at 16 and found work as a stagehand, working his way into directing. “My father was very classy; I had more of a punk attitude,” he said. As for his famous grandfather, Mr. Hammerstein didn’t get too much inside scoop.
“I guess he wrote all the time, so he was never really home,” he said. “I don’t think he got the hang of children. My father didn’t regale me with stories of his childhood too much. It was always a bit of a mystery.”
One story that he does know is that James Hammerstein’s third birthday party was covered by Time magazine, and he was chauffeured to kindergarten. But the glamour didn’t stick.
“My father hated Hollywood,” said Simon. “He was so not bling like that—he drove a crappy Mazda!”
When it came to his own leanings toward theater, Mr. Hammerstein tried not to think too much about his bloodline: “I felt like directing was something I was talented at, and it pleased me that I might have some sort of natural connection to it.”
As for carrying on the family name, Mr. Hammerstein said he was conscious of the conclusions that others might make. “I do get paranoid that people are leering at me, like, ‘Oh, Daddy got you a job.’ Though I suppose they can’t say that anymore. I try not to think about it; I don’t want to look back at my life and think I exploited anything.”
But he couldn’t help lighting up when talking about the “dinner circus” that would take place on his stage.
“I want it unpretentious,” he said. “I want it to be a place where people can eat, drink, talk, text, kiss—whatever—as well as be entertained. I do get a sense of joy when the audience is breathing in the same rhythm.”
  

The New York Times:
Sept. 6, 2006

Fall Preview: Dining Out
By Florence Fabricant

Here are restaurants that plan to open later this year or early next year, on the dates in parentheses.

THE BOX Richard Farnabe, last seen at Montrachet, will prepare everything from small plates to full meals at this 5,000-square-foot dining-cabaret place. (October) 189 Chrystie Street (Stanton Street), (212) 982-9301.
  

The New York Times:
Sept. 3, 2006

Fall Preview

The Box
A pedigreed crew is behind this surrealistic dinner-theater on the Lower East Side. Owners include Simon Hammerstein, the 28-year-old grandson of Oscar; Randy Weiner, the “Donkey Show’’ writer; and Serge Becker, the night life impresario. The actors Jude Law and Rachel Weisz sit on the board of the opera house-cum-concert saloon, which will open in early October. The entertainment will be eccentric: Thai fighters one night and opera singers in Mexican wrestling masks the next. (189 Chrystie Street)
  

Black Book:
September 2006

Hammerstein Time:
The Box brings a taste of the roaring 20's to the LES
by Bill Powers

Exactly a century ago, his great great grandfather Oscar built the family’s namesake, Hammerstein Ballroom. Years later, his grandfather was half of the legendary Broadway duo Rodgers & Hammerstein. “I guess there is some pressure to live up to the legacy,” admits Simon Hammerstein, 28, who opens a new performance space, The Box, this fall. “Really though, I want to channel what they were doing and re-contextualize it for a modern audience. They used to throw these outrageous parties on the roof of the theaters with dancing girls and tightrope walkers, circus walkers. It was completely surreal.”

Arriving on the heels of Fashion Week and with cocktails waitresses looking very Zac Posen, you can expect The Box to pay homage to Hammerstein’s ancestry while incorporating everything from Dita Von Teese to the Citizen’s Band to Baz Luhrmann musicals.

“I hate the terms burlesque, cabaret, vaudeville: they’re all so loaded,” he gripes, “Think midget opera singers in Mexican wrestling masks performing Puccini’s Turandot. One minute you’re sitting at The Stork Club, the next you’re in an East Berlin train station.”
  

OK!
Aug. 21, 2006

Jude’s latest business venture

Jude Law, who’s been filming My Blueberry Nights on New York City’s trendy Lower East Side, now has one more reason to hang out there. He’s a board member of The Box, a local performance space and lounge currently in development. It’s the brainchild of Jude’s friend, Simon Hammerstein, grandson of Oklahoma! and South Pacific writer Oscar Hammerstein.

At The Box, Jude will join fellow A-list board members Rachel Weisz and Josh Lucas.
  

The Village Voice:
May 15, 2006.

Extreme Makeovers: For adventurous theater companies, all the world's a stage—literally
by Alexis Soloski

A zipper factory. A lumberyard. An orphanage. A yoga studio. Schools, speakeasies, banks, and churches. Nearly every building now housing an Off-Off-Broadway theater was once something else, but few spaces can claim as varied a history as 189 Chrystie Street. That address will soon boast the Box, a theater developed by stage directors Simon Hammerstein, Richard Kimmel, and Randy Weiner. At present, the Box stands as an unassuming two stories of yellow brick, from which sounds of sawing, hammering, and NPR's All Things Considered emerge. But in previous decades, it hosted a sign company, a truck garage, a tenement, a slaughterhouse, and—most creepily—an African American burial ground circa 1850. "There was a rumor some bones had been found," Kimmel recalls excitedly. "We had a visit from a city archaeologist." Happily, the site holds no human remains, but excavations of the basement have unearthed milk bottles, mosaic tiling, cast-iron columns, medicine vials, snuffboxes, and Prohibition-era liquor bottles.

Hammerstein, who based his design concept on the Birdcage Theater, a famous Wild West saloon and opera house in Tombstone, Arizona, wanted a space similarly "rich in ghosts." He seems to have found one. But what New York theater isn't haunted to some degree? Very few companies or producers can afford to construct a theater from the ground up or completely gut an existing structure—simply leasing a place drains most budgets. So playhouses usually betray hints of their past lives.

he gentlemen opening the Box have the advantage of some $2 million in investment capital, to say nothing of their reserves of brashness, and they may create that most unlikely of playhouses—a retrofitted space with more than its share of luxuries. "I hate going to the theater," Hammerstein complains, "to a smelly room without air-conditioning and we're all cramped up and I'm going to get a cold because someone's breathing in my face. We all love the theater. But we're frustrated." Kimmel and Weiner nod in agreement. They all love the history of their space and its architectural details, but they prefer their vision of comfort and elegance. "We want it to be that rare thing," Weiner explains, "[a place] no one has ever been to before. It's not merely resurfaced. It's purpose-built for us.".

W Magazine:
April 2006

Uncensored: Lounge Act

As a theater director, Simon Hammerstein, the 28-year-old grandson of Oscar, has worked on puppet operas, Shakespearean spoofs and existential dramas.  So he’s planning great theatrical effects for The Box, that will open this spring in an old sign factory on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.  As the clock inches toward midnight each evening, a troupe of comedians and dancers will perform a wild vaudeville and burlesque.  “We want to go back to the Stork Club days,” says Hammerstein.  “It’ll be more like a Folies Bergere than a cabaret.”  Hammerstein has also wrangled an eclectic “artistic board” that will help develop new work at the space; members include Jude Law, Rachel Weisz, Jill Clayburgh, Josh Lucas and Julia Stiles.

The New York Times:
March 13, 2006

Kerouac's 'Beat Generation' Onstage
By Jesse McKinley

Jack Kerouac was known for his prose, man, but he wrote other stuff, too, including "Beat Generation," the aptly titled play he jotted down in 1957, just after the publication of "On the Road." The play lay dormant until it was rediscovered by Sterling Lord, Kerouac's longtime agent, who turned up a manuscript while working on his memoirs recently. The actor Ethan Hawke and a few friends read an excerpt at the New York Public Library last fall, and next spring it is to be produced. Richard Kimmel will direct and is working out some kinks in the script. The production, the play's first, is to be staged at the Box, a new, as yet uncompleted theater on Chrystie Street on the Lower East Side. No casting has been announced, but only hipsters need apply, dig?

March 3, 2005

(L to R) Randy Weiner, Simon Hammerstein, Richard Kimmel
(click to enlarge)

IN THE WINGS: Neighborhood Watch
By David Cote

Not so long ago, the Lower East Side was synonymous with experimental theater in below-the-radar spaces such as Nada, the Present Company Theatorium, and Surf Reality. But over the past few years, as Ludlow and its neighboring streets have sprouted chic eateries, lounges and Eurotrashy boutiques, financially risky theaters have been driven out. Now a troika of downtown play-makers hopes to buck the trend. Writer Randy Weiner (THE DONKEY SHOW) and directors Richard Kimmel and Simon Hammerstein are in the process of renovating a former sign factory, to be christened THE BOX, at 189 Chrystie Street. The $1 million renovation will turn the space into an intimate 200-seat venue for music and shows, with an Art Deco, speakeasy vibe. Construction starts this spring, and the opening is targeted for the fall. How does the trio hope to succeed where so many others failed? “The nonprofit model isn’t viable for a new enterprise today,” Kimmel says, noting that the neighborhood has historically been showbiz-friendly. “We’ve got a way to keep the arts in the LES without depending on handouts or grants to pay our rent. And it’s the same way they did it a hundred years ago: great entertainment and strong drinks.”

PsychoPedia.com:
July 26, 2006

Click Here to read full article with more pictures.

picture by Patrick Mcmullan

Trash & Vaudeville:
Simon Hammerstein Brings Back the Bawdy Concert Saloon
by Sara Costello

We’ve all heard stories about how New York City nightlife was once the world’s best.  A city with legendary clubs worthy of staying up past dawn; clubs whose names represent the eras in which they existed. Come September, 28-year-old theater scion Simon Hammerstein and partners will open The Box. And, if all goes as planned, it could give some jaded New Yorkers a reason to go out again. 

Oh, did we mention it’s dinner theatre? “Please don’t call it a nightclub.  It’s dinner theatre for a younger generation,” begs the London-born, New York-bred theater director whose first gig was producing raves at age 16. The idea for The Box was born when Hammerstein was directing late-night theater with The Wooster Group’s Richard Kimmel.  Along with Randy Weiner (of The Donkey Show), the three hope to create a world that transports. “It’s submersion theater. I want to deliver a show in a much less sheepish manner, and create a world that transports.”

The space, which is still undergoing renovation, is located in a 70-year-old, two-story, 5,000-square-foot sign factory on Chrystie Street, with a stage door that opens onto Freeman Alley. Most of the materials including the lighting, bars, wallpaper, and marble fireplaces are salvaged antiques from the 1920s, which create a wacky patchwork that feels part theater, part brothel, and part speakeasy.  Everything has history -- from the old subway tiles, to Prohibition-era bottles unearthed in the basement. Upstairs will have curtained off private booths, bathroom stalls culled from an insane asylum, and a vintage-looking crib. Downstairs, dressing rooms contain 1920s vanities.The Box, which boasts board members like Jude Law, Rachel Weisz, and Josh Lucas, plans to offer world-class entertainment in an intimate environment. They have hired the engineer from the Metropolitan Opera House, and their premiere show will be Puccini’s Turandot, followed by Jack Kerouac’s 1957 jazz play, Beat Generation. “We want to do shows that will be raucous,” explains Hammerstein over drinks at neighboring restaurant Freeman’s. (Apparently, all reported conflicts between Hammerstein and Freeman’s owner Taavo Somer over hipster alley rights, have been squashed.)
Just don’t look for Hammerstein -- who takes piano lessons to unload stress -- to take the stage. “I’m not very good.”