Throughout the years, the theater has staged long-running productions including The Teahouse of the August Moon, Dracula, Into the Woods, Guys and Dolls, and Kinky Boots.

The Al Hirschfeld Theatre is on 302 West 45th Street, on the south sidewalk between Ninth and Eighth Avenues, in the Theater District and Hell's Kitchen neighborhoods of Midtown Manhattan in New York City.

[11][14] Furthermore, Lansburgh specialized in designing movie palaces on the West Coast of the United States, including Los Angeles's Hill Street Theatre and San Francisco's Golden Gate Theater.

The bottom of the staircase, to the west, contains another doorway that is marked as a stage entrance; the words "Erected by Martin Beck 1924" are carved on an adjacent column.

[41][42] Although Beck was supplanted as the leader of the Orpheum Circuit in 1923, he wished to continue doing business in the city, and he planned a theater for legitimate shows.

[49] Beck initially planned to open his namesake theater with a production of Imre Madách's The Tragedy of Man, but he instead decided to book the operetta Madame Pompadour after seeing it in London and several other European cities.

[55][56] This was followed in 1925 by a more popular show, a musical adaptation of the play Captain Jinks by Clyde Fitch,[55][57] starring J. Harold Murray and Joe E. Brown for 167 performances.

[58][59] A. H. Woods subsequently leased the theater for his production of the John Colton play The Shanghai Gesture,[60][61] starring Florence Reed, which opened at the Beck in 1926[55][62] and ran for 210 performances.

[79] In 1930, the Theatre Guild presented George Bernard Shaw's The Apple Cart,[80][81] Philip Barry's Hotel Universe,[82][83] and Sergei Tretyakov's Roar China!

[84][85] The Theatre Guild hosted Maxwell Anderson's play Elizabeth the Queen to the Beck in early 1931, starring Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne.

[97] The Abbey Theatre departed in January 1933,[98] and the Beck hosted the play The Lake, featuring film star Katharine Hepburn, the same year.

[100][101][102] The D'Oyly Carte Opera Company commenced a season of Gilbert and Sullivan works at the Beck in September 1934,[103][104] performing 11 operettas[105] and running for 15 weeks.

[109][114][115] Cornell's husband Guthrie McClintic had directed several of the mid-1930s plays at the Martin Beck Theatre, including Romeo and Juliet and Winterset.

[105] Also among these were Shaw's play Saint Joan, which opened in 1936 and featured Cornell, Maurice Evans, and Tyrone Power Jr.[109][116][117] The D'Oyly Carte Opera Company returned in August 1936 to perform another set of Gilbert and Sullivan operettas,[118][119] running through to the end of the year.

[140][143] Members of the United States Army then presented five plays in August 1943,[144][145] and Richard Rodgers and Herbert Fields's musical A Connecticut Yankee opened that November.

[140][150] The Beck hosted the play Foolish Notion with Tallulah Bankhead and Donald Cook in 1945,[140][151] followed the same year by Leonard Bernstein, Betty Comden, and Adolph Green's popular musical On the Town,[148] the latter of which ran for six months.

[152][153] Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer's musical St. Louis Woman was presented at the Beck in 1946,[154][155] and O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh was staged that year.

[158][168][169] The following year, Tennessee Williams's The Rose Tattoo starred Eli Wallach and Maureen Stapleton,[154][170][171] Maxwell Anderson's Barefoot in Athens had a short run in 1951,[172][173] as did Truman Capote's The Grass Harp in 1952.

[175][176] The John Patrick comedy The Teahouse of the August Moon, starring David Wayne, opened in October 1953[177][178] and ultimately ran for 1,027 performances over two and a half years.

[200] In 1963, the theater staged Mother Courage and Her Children with Anne Bancroft, Barbara Harris, and Gene Wilder;[201][202] a transfer of Strange Interlude;[203] and Edward Albee's version of The Ballad of the Sad Café with Colleen Dewhurst and Michael Dunn.

[204][205][206] The play The Physicists with Jessica Tandy and Hume Cronyn,[204][207][208] as well as the musical I Had a Ball with Richard Kiley and Buddy Hackett, both opened at the Beck in 1964.

[215] Under Jujamcyn's operation, the Beck hosted the Albee play A Delicate Balance, featuring Tandy, Cronyn, Rosemary Murphy, and Marian Seldes, in 1966.

[225] In 1971, the Beck hosted Albee's All Over with Tandy, Dewhurst, Betty Field, and George Voskovec,[226][227] as well as the musical The Grass Harp, based on Capote's play two decades earlier.

[236][237] In 1981, the Beck hosted the Lillian Hellman play The Little Foxes, featuring Elizabeth Taylor,[238][239][240] and the Robert Brush and Martin Charnin musical The First.

[238][245] The Royal Shakespeare Company returned in 1983 with All's Well That Ends Well,[238][246][247] and the musical The Rink with Liza Minnelli and Chita Rivera was staged at the Beck in 1984,[238][248] running for 204 performances.

[273][274] That October, Ken Ludwig's Moon Over Buffalo opened at the Beck with Carol Burnett and Philip Bosco;[275][276] it lasted for 308 performances.

[292][294] In late 2002, Jujamcyn announced that the Martin Beck Theatre would be renamed after illustrator Al Hirschfeld the following June, celebrating what would be his 100th birthday.

[316][317] In 2009, Roth acquired a 50 percent stake in Jujamcyn and assumed full operation of the firm when Landesman joined the National Endowments of the Arts.

[336] Jujamcyn and Ambassador Theatre Group (ATG) agreed to merge in early 2023; the combined company would operate seven Broadway theaters, including the Al Hirschfeld.

[337][338] In July 2023, Jordan Roth sold a 93 percent stake in Jujamcyn's five theaters, including the Al Hirschfeld Theatre, to ATG and Providence Equity.