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Newest theater on Avenue of Arts is one to applaud

A theater should be a sanctuary for the imagination, a place where you can withdraw from fact-based reality and surrender to the primal desire to be lost in a story. The performance hall at the new Suzanne Roberts Theatre works like a full-body immersion tank.

A theater should be a sanctuary for the imagination, a place where you can withdraw from fact-based reality and surrender to the primal desire to be lost in a story. The performance hall at the new Suzanne Roberts Theatre works like a full-body immersion tank.

One reason the Avenue of the Arts' newest member feels so blissfully disconnected from the world is because it is buried deep within the Symphony House complex. You must abandon the bustle of South Broad Street, pass through the cool - perhaps too cool - lobby, and then transition through a golden decompression chamber before finally swinging open the door to the theatrical safe house.

When you sink into one of the plush seats, it's as if you've arrived at an intimate club, or maybe an affluent friend's lavish home screening room.

It's not just the tiny dimensions of the space, built for the Philadelphia Theatre Company. With just 365 fixed seats, the theater feels like a room, not a hall. It's the most satisfying element in the complex, which pushes the Avenue of the Arts brand another block south, to Lombard Street.

Architects Richard L. Maimon and James Timberlake, of KieranTimberlake Associates, have tuned the two-tiered, three-sided seating plan so tightly it almost pings. No matter where you sit, you are likely to feel that you can make eye contact with the actors on the deep proscenium stage, and that they are talking to you.

Yet, in journeying from Broad Street to the auditorium, you can't help noticing the disconnect between building exterior and theater interior. Symphony House, designed for Dranoff Properties by Bower Lewis Thrower Architects, is a crude and confused historical pastiche. Coming upon the contemporary auditorium, dressed with authentic richness in golds, reds and purples, is like discovering a fabulous chocolate truffle inside a stale pastry shell.

The two firms produce very different architecture. KieranTimberlake has stuck with university and cultural clients (including the Arden Theatre), while BLT has gone the developer route. Both firms are quick to embrace new materials and technologies, but with widely different results.

BLT covered Symphony House in lightweight precast-concrete panels that allowed it to reduce the thickness of the floor slabs. The innovation permitted higher ceilings and probably saved Dranoff some money, but look awful in their forced historical role.

KieranTimberlake also introduced a palette of daring materials, from the interactive, shimmering Sensitile on the donor wall to the glass-reinforced gypsum panels that ripple down the walls of the theater. Sometimes familiar materials are applied in new ways, like the red herringbone leather with gold trim that frames the stage like a fine book binding. But the architects never ask the materials to be something they're not. And they look a lot better for it.

Even more than materials, KieranTimberlake loves to experiment with technology. The Roberts is the first among the six Broad Street theaters to embrace video with a vengeance. Flat-screen panels, which promote programming and enliven an otherwise sedate street wall, were long overdue on the Avenue. In the evening, the white-walled lobby will also be washed by the colors of a video loop, an art piece featuring actor and clown Bill Irwin.

Regrettably, the video wasn't working when I toured the theater. But the absence of the loop made clear that the lobby suffers without the light-show sparkle. Despite strongly colored carpeting and furniture, the white Sheetrock walls feel sterile for a theater lobby. It would have been a perfect place to go crazy with the Sensitile.

It's a shame the lobby is so barren because one of the theater's great virtues is the series of two-story shop windows that allow glimpses inside. While it might seem like a no-brainer, the Roberts is the first Broad Street theater to exploit the preshow lobby spectacle. A buzzing crowd makes for great advertising buzz. The facade's transparency is another reason the video loop should be running during the day, when the theater is most static.

KieranTimberlake was clearly desperate to jazz up the theater facade with a showstopping marquee, but its design seems to have been infected by the weaknesses of the rest of the building. It's garish and ultimately ineffectual.

The sign, assembled from sheets of varicolored steel, looks like a red fluttering scarf and is meant to evoke the outsized personality of Suzanne Roberts, wife of Comcast's Ralph Roberts, cable-TV personality, and lead donor. Her boldly scripted signature appears over the curving metal form, which changes color from orange to purple to red as you pass by. Yes, it's eye-catching, but the colors and shimmer are a little too reminiscent of sunlight on a puddle of motor oil.

Far more serious is the problem of readability. The sign looks best when you're directly across the street. But approach from the north or south, and you won't know where you are. Unlike a more conventional marquee, there are no side panels, just a clunky steel beam, to let you know when you're nearing the theater.

Philadelphia is full of hidden jewel boxes, so maybe it's enough that the Suzanne Roberts encases one more. Once you get past the faux historical facade, the clumsy sign, and the underwhelming lobby, the haven of the theater awaits as a reward for the eye and the mind.