Newsday, Melville, N.Y., On The Isle Column

By Aileen Jacobson, Newsday, Melville, N.Y.

Mar. 18–Talia Shire remembers hanging out at Hofstra University’s playhouse with her older brother, Francis Ford Coppola, when she was only 11 or 12. He was a student in the drama department, says Shire, who is best known for her work in the “Rocky” and “Godfather” films. The latter, of course, were directed by Coppola, who “met his destiny” at Hofstra, Shire says. “His fire was lit there.”

Susan Sullivan also met her destiny at Hofstra, says the actress best known for her TV roles in such series as “Dharma & Greg,”"Falcon Crest” and “The Nine.”

“It was a very seminal time in my life,” Sullivan says. “I found my soul.”

Shire and Sullivan are both returning to Hofstra’s 50-year-old John Cranford Adams Playhouse next weekend to star in a staged reading of “Agnes of God” along with Hofstra junior Missy Dowse. Dowse plays Agnes, a novitiate nun who has given birth to a baby, discovered dead, but who insists she is a virgin. John Pielmeier’s play debuted on Broadway 25 years ago and became a movie in 1985. Sullivan plays a psychiatrist and Shire plays the mother superior who clashes with the psychiatrist.

“It’s an incredibly emotional journey, for the actors and the audience,” says Bob Spiotto, executive producer of Hofstra Entertainment and director of the reading, a benefit for the Department of Drama and Dance.

Sullivan, who attended junior high in Baldwin and graduated from Freeport High School, starred in a reading of “Agnes” a few years ago with Kathy Baker. “Some people said it worked better in this form than as a play,” Sullivan says. That time, she played the mother superior. “It’s as if it’s another play, to come back at it from another character’s point of view,” says Sullivan, who acts in theater and on TV. She just filmed a spot on “Brothers and Sisters” as mother to actress Jenna Elfman, whose mother-in-law she played in “Dharma & Greg.”

Spiotto and the actresses are communicating via e-mails and phone calls until they rehearse in person for several days before the show. But two weeks ago, Sullivan invited Shire to her home in Los Angeles, where both live. They’d never met.

Shire says she jumped at the chance to work with Sullivan — “She’s pretty great … always first-rate” — and Dowse: “I love young actors. I love teaching them and being with them.” She hasn’t been onstage in “a ton of years” — she’s moved into directing and producing, she says, and spent many years raising five children — but looks forward, with “jitters,” to playing Mother Miriam Ruth. “She’s very wise,” Shire says.

She went to Yale Drama School, but another brother, August, got a master’s degree at Hofstra. The family lived in Bayside and Great Neck, she says. “We were always moving,” and she often traveled with her father, composer and conductor Carmine Coppola.

“I call us the circus family,” she says. “We understand this one great thing — how to put on a show.”

“Agnes of God,” John Cranford Adams Playhouse, Hofstra University, Hempstead, 8 p.m. next Saturday, $28, $25 seniors and non-Hofstra students, $10 HofstraCard holders. Call 516-463-6644.

Eli Wallach Q&A

Stefan Kanfer, who was a movie critic for Time and a theater critic for The New Leader, has seen a lot of Eli Wallach on screen and stage. So he’s an apt choice to lead a Q&A session with Wallach next Saturday, at the start of a weeklong mini-retrospective of Wallach’s films in Great Neck.

“An Evening with Eli Wallach” doesn’t include an old film, though. No — the busy 91-year-old actor is featured in “The Hoax,” which gets a sneak-peak screening before its April release. The movie is about the elaborate scam author Clifford Irving hatched to write and publish a fake Howard Hughes autobiography. Wallach plays Hughes’ chief business associate, Noah Dietrich.

“He’s the last oldest active screen actor,” says Kanfer, who lectures in the writing program at Southampton College, now part of Stony Brook University. Kanfer has met Wallach briefly, he says, but feels he knows him better from an Off-Broadway show Wallach and his wife, Anne Jackson, once did about their long careers and marriage.

“They were so endearing. … It was just very funny, and they were gracious. They were nice to each other. It made one feel good,” says Kanfer, who has written several books, including the recent “Stardust Lost: The Triumph, Tragedy and Mishugas of the Yiddish Theater in America.” Wallach, who has a house in East Hampton, wasn’t part of that world, though he was born in Brooklyn of Polish Jewish parents.

Kanfer says he plans to ask Wallach how he stays “awake and new and fresh” for so many movies and “how he’s stayed married for more than 50 years in an industry not recognized for that.” Jackson is expected to attend the event, which includes a cocktail reception.

The Wallach tribute continues with “The Magnificent Seven” at 2 p.m. next Sunday; “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” at 6 p.m. next Sunday; “The Line-Up” at 6 p.m. March 30; and “The Misfits” at 8:15 p.m. March 30.

“An Evening With Eli Wallach,” Clearview Squire Cinema, 115 Middle Neck Rd., Great Neck, 7 p.m. March 24, $35 general admission, $50 priority seating. Other films, Great Neck Arts Center’s Doris Weinstein Playhouse, 113 Middle Neck Rd., $5. Call 516-829-2570 or visit greatneck arts.org.

MINTZ TRIBUTE

Roslyn Heights piano teacher Ouida Mintz, a respected musician who taught about 1,000 students, died in August at age 98. Next Saturday at 7:30 p.m., seven renowned pianists from around the world will gather at the Jeanne Rimsky Theater at Landmark on Main Street, 232 Main St., Port Washington, for a memorial concert. Composer Jon Stroll will perform a song she composed for him some 40 years ago, and singers will present songs from a musical, “My Friend Lenny,” Mintz was developing from her memoir about her friendship with Leonard Bernstein. Admission is free, but donations, to benefit music education, are welcome. To reserve, call 516-621-2195 or 800-769-4171

EVERYTHING’S ROSIE

There’ll be Rosies onstage and, probably, Rosies in the audience during “Swingtime Rosie” at Star Playhouse at the Suffolk Y Jewish Community Center, 74 Hauppauge Rd., Commack, next Saturday at 8 p.m. and next Sunday at 2 p.m. We’re referring to “Rosie the Riveter,” a nickname for World War II women who worked in defense factories. The original revue features more than 40 period songs, and local “Rosies” have been invited to attend. Tickets are $21, $16 seniors and students; $18, $14 for Y members. Call 631-462-9800, ext. 136 or visit starplayhouse.com

Copyright 2007 Newsday Inc.

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Copyright (c) 2007, Newsday, Melville, N.Y.

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