Herricks Community Players take on Broadway classic

Noah Manskar

After a hiatus, John Hayes’ daughter Michelle pulled him back into the theater when she was a Herricks seventh-grader in 1976, he said.

Hayes was in the international import-export business when Michelle volunteered him to direct the Herricks Council of PTAs’ production of “Oklahoma,” knowing he’d done community theater before he and his wife Carol Hayes moved to Williston Park, he said.

He wasn’t very involved with the PTA or Long Island theater until then, he said: “Nobody knew who the heck this young whippersnapper from Brooklyn was.”

But he put on “Oklahoma” with a cast of 50 in five weeks.

John and Carol Hayes, along with a core group of collaborators, are marking their 40th year bringing together productions as the Herricks Community Players with Stephen Sondheim’s “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,” opening May 13 at the Herricks Community Center.

“Little did I know, at 78, I’d still be at it,” John Hayes said.

In those 40 years, the Herricks Community Players have done more than 60 shows with companies as small as four and as large as 97, Hayes said. He has directed all of them except for one in 2004, after he had a triple-bypass heart surgery.

People young and old with all levels of theatrical experience put on the Broadway-quality plays and musicals, John Hayes said. Those in the cast and the audiences come from throughout the tri-state area, Carol Hayes said.

The work gives them a night away from their normal lives, John Hayes said, and gives the audience quality entertainment.

“People walk out of here saying, ‘Why do I bother going to the city?’” Carol Hayes said.

“A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” is a musical farce set in ancient Rome with about 60 people involved in the production, Carol Hayes said.

The show features a full orchestra, a professional lighting design and a set designed by Peter Triolo of New Hyde Park, whom John Hayes called the “heart” of the company.

The high quality has existed since the beginning, said Sue Weber, an East Meadow music teacher who’s been the company’s music director for 38 years.

It’s John’s direction and the people’s love for theater that makes every production excellent and draws crowds to the community center auditorium, Carol Hayes said.

“As much as I felt that it was a solid, good quality when we started, there is no question that every show gets better,” Weber said.

The crowds have gotten smaller as the surrounding community has gotten younger and more community theaters have opened across Long Island, creating stiffer competition, John Hayes said.

But the Herricks Community Fund continues to invest in the group, giving up to $70,000 for its productions, John said. The company gives all its profits back to the fund, he said.

Hayes said people have suggested just calling the group the “Herricks Players,” but he can’t leave the community out.

“That’s what makes it,” he said.

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