Thursday, October 1, 2026
The Malverne Community Theatre will perform the Shakespeare comedy “Much Ado About Nothing” at Crossroads Farms at Grossmann’s July 9 to 11. This will be the fifth year of the company’s “Shakespeare at the Farm.”
Last summer, the company performed “Julius Caesar.” “No one gets stabbed 32 times in this play, I can promise you that,” the theater’s director, David Coonan, joked. “We alternate between comedy and tragedy year by year.”
The company, founded in the 1960s but largely inactive since the late 1970s, has been performing since 2012, when it was re-founded by Coonan. He discovered that the original nonprofit troupe had never formally dissolved, so he contacted the original founding board and presented the proper paperwork to re-establish the company. Its first production under Coonan was an original at Crossroads on Halloween 2012, based on Edgar Allen Poe’s poetry. “We based in on ‘The Raven’ and other poems like that,” Coonan said.
“Shakespeare at the Farm” started in 2022. Coonan had staged plays there before, but decided on this specific annual performance because of his love for Shakespeare’s plays and his vision of how they should be performed. The inaugural performance was “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” followed by “Macbeth” in 2023 and “As You Like It” in 2024 before all the bloodletting in “Julius Caesar.”
“Shakespeare was not written for a technically elaborate stage,” Coonan said. “He wrote his works to be performed in front of crowds in the 1600s in wooden buildings. They’d watch the plays in broad daylight.”
Coonan believes his renditions of Shakespeare’s works capture their original essence through the settings in which they are performed. “In the old days, actors would go around and perform in places like farms,” he said. “I put together my love of the purity and history of theater and the community, and it all felt right.”
The company has been rehearsing since mid-May. “I expect to hear from Dave about the show in mid to late April,” Cast member JonLuc Thompson said. “We rehearse twice weekly until the show in July. After we familiarize ourselves with the script, we do blocking.”
Thompson spoke about the togetherness of the theater company. “We’re a small group, so there’s room for creativity and sharing ideas,” he said. “We all make each other better actors.”
Cast member Jill Verdi, a dedicated actress, said she enjoys the preparation as well as the performances, and the community involvement. “The whole process is therapeutic for me — I decompress from all life’s stressors,” she said. “I enjoy the creative experience, and it’s also nice to be able to do something for the community, family, and friends.”
Cast member Billy Callahan fully immerses himself in his roles, but makes sure to take the rehearsal process one step at a time. “As each week goes by, I find my characters always changing,” he said. “My idea I had in my head is always different by showtime. That’s the fun part of being in a play like this: No performance will be the same each time.”
Coonan’s iteration of the community theater has been a Malverne Chamber of Commerce member since 2022. He was the Herald’s 2022 Person of the Year, and, he recalled, “That got me a little bit of attention from the community, particularly the chamber. I struck up a good relationship with the people in charge, and we became a member.”
A Malverne resident and a Malverne High School alumnus, Coonan directs the musicals at the high school and Howard T. Herber Middle School, and since 2017 he has overseen the district’s Drama Club. “When I started at the school in 2017, all they had was the high school,” he said. “I basically tripled the size of the theater program.”
