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Hanney tours Shakespeare theater

01:00 AM EDT on Friday, August 15, 2008

Bill Hanney, who reopened Matunuck’s Theatre By The Sea last summer, was impressed during a tour Wednesday of a Connecticut theater he’s been asked to reopen.

With a team of consultants, Hanney walked through the Stratford Festival Shakespeare Theater, where stars such as Katharine Hepburn and Christopher Plummer performed for more than three decades beginning in the 1950s, the Connecticut Post reported.

And although the theater has been closed since 1989, the Post reported, Hanney said he found nothing to suggest he is wrong about his estimate that it would cost between $2.5 million and $3 million — not as much as $19.2 million, as a 1,000-page report from BL Cos. of Meriden said recently — to renovate and reopen the theater.

“The stage is magnificent,” the Post quoted Hanney as saying. “It’s large enough to contain my entire Rhode Island theater.”

Hanney does not produce Shakespeare’s plays at Theatre By The Sea, instead featuring contemporary musicals. The Stratford Town Council chose him last month to reopen the Shakespeare theater, over objections from a vocal group of residents, some even dressed in Shakespearean costume to protest the choice.

The Post quoted Hanney as saying that while he doesn’t know anything about Shakespeare, he will bring in people who do.