Hofstra Shakespeare Festival turns 75

“All the world’s a stage,” wrote William Shakespeare in “As You Like It.” But not every stage has the distinguished genealogy of the one to be used at Hofstra University’s 75th annual Shakespeare Festival Oct. 27-Nov. 5.

“The Merry Wives of Windsor,” the main stage production at this year’s festival, will be presented on a replica of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London, a replica that can trace its roots to the 1940s, explains professor and production designer David Henderson. John Cranford Adams, president of the Hempstead university at the time, was also a renowned Shakespeare scholar, says Henderson, and one of the first people in the world to try to figure out what the original Globe looked like. 

Adams built a replica of the Globe (his model sits downstairs at the school’s theater that now bears his name), which was used in Hofstra productions until 2008. “We retired it for several reasons,” says Henderson, mostly because new research revealed that “what the Globe actually looked like was not the same as what Adams thought.”

But after a few years, the university decided to try again. In 2015, Henderson was dispatched to London, where he visited the Globe that had been reconstructed there and then studied homes that had been built in the 16th and early 17th centuries. “We have no existing images of what the interior of the Globe looked like,” he says, so the design of this second-generation replica “is similar but not the same.”

One example — the color scheme is different, he says, “it’s not quite as vibrant.”

For those who perform on the stage, it hardly matters. “It gives you more of a mindset as to what Shakespeare was writing,” says Henderson. “It makes you understand what he was seeing when he was writing the play.”

THE WISDOM OF THE 'WIVES'

And there’s much to learn from “Merry Wives,” says director Keith Michael Pinault, a Hofstra alum who is now an adjunct professor in the drama department. It’s a perfect selection for the festival, “it’s the only play set in his time period,” says Pinault, who performed in the festival all four years as a student. Other well-known alums of the festival include actors Madeline Kahn, Susan Sullivan and Joe Morton, as well as television writer Phil Rosenthal.

Boiling down the plot, Pinault says the play is the story of Sir John Falstaff, a familiar Shakespeare character who finds himself in dire financial straits and decides to seduce two middle class housewives, “basically to rob them blind.” While it’s a bit of a farce (people hiding in closets, sneaking out of doors), Pinault says the play “really is about a community like the one Shakespeare was from.”

Audiences respond well to the domestic elements, says Pinault. “It’s about marriage and fidelity and trust.” And it’s Shakespeare’s most middle-class play, he notes. “There’s no king, there’s no duke, no prince or princess. These are the everyday people of Shakespeare’s time.”

BECOMING FALSTAFF

Playing Falstaff is quite a challenge,” says Dylan Morin, a junior at Hofstra. “He’s larger than life, says Morin, who adds that performing on the Globe replica “allows me to connect more with the rich language of the play.” Falstaff is “not a good guy,” says Morin, but he’s charming and funny and “he can talk himself out of any situation.” In this show, says Morin, “he finally meets his match. The merry wives outsmart him and make a fool out of him.”

“Whether Shakespeare intended it or not, it’s a feminist piece,” says senior Katie King, who plays one of the wives. “There’s something to be said about two women who, at a time when they might not have the biggest voice in the room, get to take the reins and run this whole thing together.”

Senior Chloe Selznick, who plays the other wife, says the women’s friendships are integral to the show. “We have a blast together, leading the pranks and the jokes.”

“All of the women get what they want” at the end, says Selznick.

And the men get what they deserve, concludes King, ”but they’re not angry about it. They’re almost happy for the lesson.”