For decades beginning in 1958, the Royal Poinciana Playhouse was the place to be for the glitterati of Palm Beach. Built on waterfront land once occupied by Henry Flagler’s pioneering Royal Poinciana Hotel, the theater presented original theatrical productions and, later, hosted touring Broadway shows. Countless matinee idols graced its stage—Rex Harrison, Ginger Rogers, Dina Merrill and James Earl Jones among them.
Affected in part by the emergence of competing performing-arts centers such as the Kravis in the 1990s, this cultural staple has remained dormant since 2004, when its lease with Clear Channel expired. It has resisted multiple attempts, including from such notable champions as the late actor Christopher Plummer, to revitalize it—until now.
Renamed Glazer Hall in honor of Jill and Avie Glazer, the Palm Beach couple that has invested some $15 million into its renovation, the building is set to enter a new chapter in its storied history as it begins to welcome new visitors no later than January 2026.
“I think it was 18 years [vacant] by the time my husband came home one day and said, you know, ‘the building’s been sitting there like that, and we should do something about it,’” recalls Jill Glazer, who has lived on the island with Avie since 2002. “And so that’s what started this conversation.”
Five-and-a-half years, and many more conversations, later, Glazer Hall is in the final stages of construction as of this writing, at an estimated total cost of $30 million. The Glazers serve as co-chairmen of the board for the 24,000-square-foot facility, with Allison Stockel, a veteran performing-arts programmer who previously ran a 500-seat playhouse in Ridgefield, Conn., brought on as executive director.
Their excitement for the 400-seat jewel box of a venue is palpable and infectious. “The public never had a view of the water before in the building,” Glazer says. “Now you walk in, you see the beautiful water straight ahead of you, through the big window in the back. So it now is this activated space that nobody’s had in Palm Beach for 50 or 75 years since it was built.”
Legendary architect John Volk designed the original Royal Poinciana Playhouse. Does Glazer Hall nod to his designs in any way?
GLAZER: There were no rules in terms of the inside of the landmark building and the renovation. So we could have made it cinderblock, or we could have made it as modern as possible, but we wanted to keep the intention of John Volk. The box office is built back in the exact same place and proportions, and using a lot of the same fretwork. There was a lot of red [in the Royal Poinciana Playhouse], and now there’s red detail. The steps that were in the front—we call them the John Volk steps—we’ve brought those back as well.
Why were you able to succeed in this revitalization where others had not?
GLAZER: I think we were willing to take it on, and be creative. I think [others] were trying to do just theatre, or just this or just that, and we are activating it for multi-use and as a private space as well. We’re outfitting it with all kinds of electronics. We have a sprung floor for dance. It’s really going to be a community space, and the community in Palm Beach has changed. We want it to be a place for all. For four and a half years that we were on a listening tour, we’d talk to anyone. We learned something new every day from talking to people.
Given Palm Beach’s changing demographics toward younger families, what does that mean for the programming of Glazer Hall?
STOCKEL: We want to be something that everyone can come to. So in terms of programming, everything from ballet to comedy to speakers, jazz and pop—there’s going to be everything. Jill and I have even been talking about some emerging artists that are going to be up and coming. Some of the shows that I really love are the ones like American Ballet Theatre, where grandparents can take their grandkids to it, because it’s so accessible to everybody—or the Chinese acrobats, or “Masters of Illusion.” Those are things that everybody loves, whether you’re 2 or 92.
Can you speak to the flexibility of the space, and the freedom it allows?
STOCKEL: It’s an amazing and unusual situation to have a theater of this size that can do so many different things. It could be an event space, it can be reconfigured for a cabaret show, and then the next day, it could be a full-on theatrical show. We have this wonderful in-house caterer where we can have a speaker and a lunch. So that flexibility is something that we’re planning on taking advantage of.
GLAZER: We want to do something with food and culture and music—maybe it’s a French theme, or a New Orleans theme, three or four of those in a season. People are excited. I mean, it’s hard to find reservations in town these days!
Are you planning a gala opening, and have you set a date for it?
STOCKEL: We don’t have a date set just yet, and we are working on getting a really great name. We’re thinking sometime in March, once we’ve gone through some shows. We want to make sure everything’s perfect. But we’re planning to have Judy Collins, “The Music of ABBA,” the Preservation Hall Jazz Band—we’ve got wonderful shows happening in January and February. We have Chazz Palminteri coming with his one-man show, “A Bronx Tale,” and we’ll have another one-woman show about Ruth Bader Ginsburg. We’ll have a cabaret series, with Tony Danza and Megan Hilty, opera with Renée Fleming, the Irish Tenors, comedian Paula Poundstone.
GLAZER: And film is going to be big. That was very important to my husband. Because we don’t have any left in West Palm. They took the last [cinema] down at CityPlace, and so people are starving for film.
This story is from the November/December 2025 issue of Boca magazine. For more like this, click here to subscribe to the magazine.
