whether she wanted the hotel's new 1,500-seat theater (later the Marquis Theatre) renamed in her honor. After Torch Song Trilogy ended, the Hayes hosted the musical The News, which flopped after four performances in 1985. The next year, the Hayes staged the comedy Corpse!, the mime show Mummenschanz: "The New Show", and the revue Oh, Coward!. The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) started to consider protecting the Hayes as a landmark in 1982, with discussions continuing over the next several years. The LPC designated the Hayes's facade and part of the interior as landmarks on November 17, 1987. That month, the owners announced that they would auction off the theater at a starting price of $5 million. The New York City Board of Estimate ratified the landmark designations in March 1988. The theater was auctioned the same month; both Jujamcyn Theaters and the Nederlander Organization attended the auction, but there were no bidders. Late in the decade, the Hayes hosted Larry Shue's The Nerd in 1987 and the two-act musical Romance/Romance in 1988. This was followed in 1989 by Mandy Patinkin's Dress Casual and Artist Descending a Staircase. 1990 to 2007 Premiering at the Helen Hayes Theatre in 1990 were a short run of Estelle Parsons's solo show Miss Margarida's Way, as well as a year-long run of the off-Broadway hit Prelude to a Kiss. The Hayes was remodeled in 1992, and the musical revue The High Rollers Social and Pleasure Club and the musical 3 From Brooklyn were staged the same year. Lynn Redgrave performed her solo show Shakespeare For My Father in 1993, followed the next year by Joan Rivers in Sally Marr...and Her Escorts and a stunt show by The Flying Karamazov Brothers. Rob Becker's monologue Defending the Caveman opened at the Hayes in 1995 and ran for nearly two years. This was followed in 1997 by Alfred Uhry's play The Last Night of Ballyhoo, which had 577 performances before closing. The Hayes's productions at the end of the 1990s included Getting and Spending in 1998, as well as Band in Berlin, Night Must Fall, and Epic Proportions in 1999. The revue Dirty Blonde opened in 2000 and was a hit. This was followed by Hershey Felder's solo musical tribute George Gershwin Alone and the musical By Jeeves in 2001, as well as the black comedy The Smell of the Kill in 2002. Frank Gorshin