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Slings and arrows of Shakespeare at Hofstra

With 'Hamlet,'Adams Playhouse comes full circle in its 50th year

BY ROBERT KAHN | robert.kahn@newsday.com

March 6, 2008

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In 1958, Shakespearean actor William Hutt was the first "Hamlet" to perform at a new theater at Hofstra University. A half-century later, what's past is prologue, as the Bard once wrote. Beginning today, the John Cranford Adams Playhouse celebrates its golden anniversary with "Hamlet" as the centerpiece of the school's annual Shakespeare Festival.

While the Adams Playhouse is best-known for hosting Shakespeare's plays, it also has been the base for conferences about the U.S. presidency, the site of performances by famous singers and stand-ups and, one year, even home to an Intro to Psych class that had nowhere else to go. "Hamlet," highlight of the 59th Shakespeare Festival, runs through March 16.

"It was such a cutting-edge theater," says actress Lainie Kazan, a 1960 Hofstra graduate who starred with classmate Francis Ford Coppola in "Of Thee I Sing," the first musical staged at the playhouse, the same season as "Hamlet."

For "Sing," Kazan recalls, Hofstra acquired an "Izenhouer Board," a then state-of-the-art system for synchronized flying and rigging. As a theater major, the actress spent countless nights in rehearsal or helping build sets. "We were up most of the night there," she said by phone last week from Beverly Hills. "I don't know how I ever got through my classes."

Celebrity alums

Kazan isn't the only highly regarded actor to perform at the playhouse. Over the years, area students who've been celebrated in the arts all had their first taste of theatrical success there, among them Madeline Kahn, Susan Sullivan, Margaret Colin and Tom McGowan, the "Everybody Loves Raymond" and "Frasier" regular whose decapitated head - in latex form - is suspended on a wall in the stage wings, a prop relic from his own college-era performance in "Macbeth."

The story of the playhouse is intertwined with the personal pursuits of former Hofstra president John Cranford Adams, who led the campus from 1944 to 1964. A lifelong Shakespearean scholar, the academic worked for a decade to build a miniature re-creation of the Globe Theatre in London, which he completed in 1950. The original Globe Theatre, south of the Thames River in a scrappy part of London, was, famously, where Shakespeare launched his plays.

Adams' model became the inspiration for a life-size set replicating the Globe, which was built the year after. In turn, when plans for the playhouse were developed several years after that, every part of the new theater, from scaffolding to lighting, was designed to accommodate the Globe set.

The 40,504-square-foot Hofstra Playhouse, as it was first known, was designed by Aymar Embury II, who was the chief or consulting architect on hundreds of projects in New York City, among them the Central Park Zoo and Prospect Park Bandshell. Embury is equally known for his Long Island mansions and public spaces, such as the East Hampton Library.

Theater staffers say the architect would have preferred to build the roof a few feet higher than they ultimately did, to accommodate rigging systems, but needed to take precautions out of respect for aircraft flying low on approach to Mitchel Field.

In 1974, the playhouse was rededicated to Adams, the school's third president. "The festival is one of those things that is just a hallmark of the university," says Jim Kolb, a longtime drama professor and Hofstra's resident expert on the playhouse.

A regular stop on the high school field trip circuit, the Shakespeare Festival is the most well-known denizen of the 1,130-some-odd seat playhouse, but even with time for assembly and striking, it's still only a monthlong occupant.

Presidential conferences

The university's periodic presidential conferences have been based at the playhouse since 1985, when FDR's accomplishments were reviewed by a panel of experts. Gerald Ford was on hand in 1989 for the panels reviewing his term, and Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter came to Hempstead in 1990 for the conference on his presidency. Ronald Reagan didn't attend the 1993 panels on his eight years in office, but Mikhail Gorbachev and Margaret Thatcher both did.

Tom Hayden, the '60s protest leader, sat with members of the Chicago 7 during the 1987 retrospective of the Nixon presidency. Vietnam veterans protesting the appearance were believed responsible for a bomb threat made against the playhouse, which was not taken seriously by the anti-war demonstrators onstage - although audience members were advised to leave if the threat made them uncomfortable.

Former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft was a speaker in 2007.

Entertainers from Deep Purple (a concert in the mid-'70s) and Billy Joel (a songwriting symposium in 1996) to Jon Stewart also have performed at the playhouse, which, despite sophisticated renovations to the infrastructure, still has the occasional spot held together with spit-and-bubblegum. During an October 2001 appearance, snarky stand-up Stewart wandered to the front of the stage and lifted a piece of cardboard covering the "pit control socket," which contains switches to raise and lower the hydraulic orchestra pit.

The cardboard cover was labeled in white paint: "Save me."

"Riiiight," Stewart riffs in a moment available on YouTube. "Because a 10-by-10-inch piece of cardboard, now that's irreplaceable."

WHEN&WHERE"Hamlet," featuring guest direction by Gus Kaikkonen. 8 p.m. today-Saturday and March 14 and 15; 2 p.m. Sunday and March 16. Tickets: $12;