The auditorium contains ornamental plasterwork, a sloped orchestra level, a large balcony, and a coved ceiling with a 36 ft-wide (11 m) dome.

The Ethel Barrymore Theatre is on 243 West 47th Street, on the north sidewalk between Eighth Avenue and Broadway, near Times Square in the Theater District of Midtown Manhattan in New York City.

The ground floor is clad in rusticated blocks of terracotta, painted in a limestone color, above a granite water table.

[39] In September 1928, Lee Shubert announced that the theater would open the next month, with Barrymore starring in G. Martinez Sierra's play The Kingdom of God.

[20][41][42] During the opening, which was attended by many New York City socialites, Ethel Barrymore received seven curtain calls before she was able to give a speech thanking the Shuberts.

[44] Ethel Barrymore appeared at her eponymous theater again in 1929, when she co-starred with Louis Calhern in The Love Duel,[42][45] which ran for 88 performances.

[49] These included a transfer of John Drinkwater's comedy Bird in Hand in September 1929,[50] as well as Death Takes a Holiday that December,[42][51] the latter of which had a comparatively long run of 181 performances.

[65][69] The same year, Ethel Barrymore stopped performing under the Shuberts' management, prompting the brothers to remove her first name from the marquee.

[73] The theater's plays in 1933 included Design for Living with Alfred Lunt, Lynn Fontanne, and Noël Coward,[74][75][76] as well as the mystery Ten Minute Alibi and the drama Jezebel.

[81][82] The Barrymore hosted a transfer of the play Distaff Side that March,[77] and Philip Merivale and Gladys Cooper staged revivals of Shakespeare's Macbeth and Othello that October.

[81][83] The play Parnell opened in November 1935 and ran for 98 performances;[81][84] it was followed by a double bill of Irwin Shaw's Bury the Dead and Prelude in April 1936,[81][85] then Emlyn Williams's Night Must Fall that September.

[100] The musical Pal Joey, featuring Gene Kelly and Vivienne Segal with a score by Rodgers and Hart, opened later that year[101][102] and ran for 270 performances before transferring to another theater.

[97][106][107] Walter Kerr and Leo Brady's Count Me In had a short run in 1942,[108][109] but Anton Chekhov's The Three Sisters with Katharine Cornell was more successful, with 123 performances.

[121][122] In 1947, Gian Carlo Menotti presented a double bill of the musical plays The Telephone and The Medium at the theater,[121][123] which ran for 212 performances.

[124][125] Later that year, the Barrymore presented Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire, originally featuring Marlon Brando, Kim Hunter, Karl Malden, and Jessica Tandy.

[121][129][130] Later that year, the Barrymore hosted Bell, Book and Candle with husband-and-wife team Rex Harrison and Lilli Palmer,[131][132] which ran for 233 performances.

[143][147][148] Leonard Sillman's revue New Faces of 1956 ran for 220 performances,[138][149] featuring Maggie Smith in her Broadway debut, as well as female impersonator T. C.

[154][163] Later in the decade, the theater hosted The Amen Corner in 1965,[154][164][165] followed the next year by Wait Until Dark[166][167][168] and a limited engagement by Les Ballets Africains.

[177][178][179] The next year, Alec McCowen appeared in The Philanthropist,[177][180][181] as well as Melvin Van Peebles's musical Ain't Supposed to Die a Natural Death.

[177][182] The New Phoenix Repertory Company premiered at the Barrymore in late 1973, with three works:[177] The Visit,[183][184] Chemin de Fer,[185][186] and Holiday.

[176] These included Lunch Hour, which opened in 1980 with Gilda Radner and Sam Waterston,[191][203][204] followed in 1981 by The West Side Waltz with Katharine Hepburn and Dorothy Loudon.

[191][205][206] Hume Cronyn returned to the Barrymore in 1982, making his playwriting debut with Foxfire,[207] in which he costarred with Jessica Tandy and Keith Carradine.

[239][240][241] The next year, the Lincoln Center Theater brought Mule Bone, a never-performed play written in 1930 by Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston;[242][243] it ran at the Barrymore for 67 performances.

[258][259] The Barrymore next hosted a revival of the Greek tragedy Electra in 1998,[260][261][262] then the West End hit Amy's View[263][261][264] and the musical Putting It Together in 1999.

[265][266][267] The Donmar Warehouse's production of The Real Thing[13][268][269] and the Manhattan Theatre Club's version of The Tale of the Allergist's Wife were both performed at the Barrymore in 2000.

[272][11] As part of a settlement with the United States Department of Justice in 2003, the Shuberts agreed to improve disabled access at their 16 landmarked Broadway theaters, including the Barrymore.

[290][291] When The Curious Incident closed, the food show presenter Alton Brown had a limited appearance at the Barrymore in November 2016.

[306] A transfer of the West End play Peter Pan Goes Wrong opened at the Barrymore in April 2023, running for three months.

[307][308] This was followed in August 2023 by a limited run of Antonio Díaz's magic show El Mago Pop,[309][310] then in October 2023 by Barry Manilow and Bruce Sussman's musical Harmony.

It grossed $197,878 in ticket sales on September 3, 2021, breaking the previous single-performance house record at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre set by the production of Betrayal ($184,476).