Suffolk Theater Leads A Revival And Lights Up Riverhead

It was a venue born in another era.

The Suffolk Theater opened in 1933, and for decades the grand Art Deco movie palace served as both the figurative and literal heart of Riverhead’s Main Street.

Then times and tastes changed. By the end of the 20th century, Americans had largely abandoned their downtowns and were no longer interested in the shopping, dining and entertainment experiences that previous generations had enjoyed. Malls were in, Main Street was out — and in Riverhead, the once vibrant center of town faded as commerce migrated to nearby Route 58, where the reign of the big-box stores took hold and continues to this day.

Suffolk Theater was one of the many casualties. In 1987, “Dirty Dancing” was screened there — literally, it was the last picture show. In the two decades that followed, the Suffolk Theater sat empty and abandoned.

But then in 2005, Dianne and Bob Castaldi purchased the building from the Town of Riverhead, renovated it, and, in 2013, reopened the theater as a state-of-the-art performing arts center.

If you take a stroll through downtown Riverhead today, you’ll notice that something of a renaissance has occurred on Main Street — restaurants, hotels, parks and the world-class Long Island Aquarium are open and thriving — and at the center of it all sits the Suffolk Theater, that regally restored Art Deco movie palace from a bygone era.

Last fall, Gary Hygom was named Suffolk Theater’s new artistic director, and during a recent interview at the theater he spoke about where he envisions the venue going in the coming years.

Hygom took over the position from Daniel Binderman, who, during his eight-year tenure, built a loyal following of Baby Boomers by highlighting music from the 1960s on the stage.

While that’s still a staple genre on the menu, Hygom, a resident of Mattituck, is now looking to expand the theater’s offerings — not only by offering music that will appeal to the Gen Xers and Millennials of the region, but by also presenting entertainment options that appeal to the Gen Zers and even younger audiences.

“Our typical audience has been very much bands from the ’60s,” Hygom explained. “Dan Binderman was really focused on that, and he carved out a great niche market for the theater. But I want more than that.

“There’s never really been anything here for children and families,” he added. “I want to do a children’s show with a pancake breakfast on Sunday mornings, creating and linking food and entertainment.”

Just like pancakes, Hygom feels there’s an East End appetite for a wider range of acts. With the increased popularity of both the North and South Forks in recent years, he also sees a built-in audience for Suffolk Theater, which is centrally and conveniently located between them both.

So while he is actively pursuing new acts to bring to the theater — often with input from younger staff members — Hygom remains well-aware of the appeal of musicians from the 1960s to his longtime loyal audiences.

“I think everyone who works here loves multiple genres of music. If you’re a lover of music, you can’t not love what we had here recently with Peter Noone and Herman’s Hermits,” Hygom said, adding, “If you’ve never seen them, you need to. What an unbelievable showman and killer musicians he had. It was a great night of music. It sold quickly — we had just under 600 people here.”

“Even I loved the show,” added Meg Sexton, Suffolk Theater’s marketing director, who admits that she prefers music from a slightly later era. She is particularly excited about The Warped Tour Band, which will be performing at the theater on July 22.

“It’s a local band that plays all the music ever performed at those Warped Tour summer music festivals that traveled the country — like the Emo music crowd,” explained Sexton. “Bands like My Chemical Romance, Third Eye Blind and Blink-182, so it’s a big throwback. That’ll be an entirely different audience than this place has ever brought in.”

“And, two months later, we’ll have the Glenn Miller Orchestra,” added Hygom, who also is keen to bring in more bands from his own preferred era — the 1980s.

While music that was well-known and loved by a range of generations is a target, Hygom explains that it’s not just familiar genres that he’s looking to serve up at the theater. He’s also bringing in highly talented performers who may be entirely new to audiences.

“We have Albert Cummings coming in. I really never heard of him, but he’s an unbelievable blues guitarist,” Hygom said. “We’re also trying to introduce world music — we have ukulele player Jake Shimakurao coming. We’re hoping to develop a market where people can explore and find new artists and new music they haven’t experienced. That’s a dream if we can make it happen.

“So we’re looking outside the box. There’s a market and an audience there. This needs to be a place where you experience new things in life, new music and genres you don’t know,” added Hygom. “That’s the hope, that we begin to diversify. We’re also cognizant that there’s a market already here. We don’t want to do away with what has been built, so how do we maintain that and still grow in every direction?

“There’s a huge amount on the horizon that we want to tackle. We’re just beginning.”

Perhaps one of the most unique aspects of the Suffolk Theater as a venue is its seating — which is none. The theater is a tiered, wide-open space, and the configuration of individual chairs and tables is customizable, based on the size of the audience or desired vibe. With 13 different seating charts, the theater can accommodate up to 695 patrons in traditional row seating, or it can be designed as more of a cabaret with a nightclub feel.

Hygom finds the possibilities endless and exhilarating.

“One of the absolutely coolest things about the room is the flexibility of it. Calling it just a ‘theater’ doesn’t fit this room,” said Hygom, who has taken to calling the venue simply “The Suffolk.” “It’s a balance between a club, a performance space and a theater. We can extend a stage out in the middle of the room and do theater-in-the-round. With a dance floor that size, we can have a club feeling to it. There are so many options.”

And Hygom is contemplating them all. Though he’s new to this theater, he comes to the job with decades of experience. For 20 years, Hygom was a producer at Sag Harbor’s Bay Street Theater and in recent years served as the executive director of the Patchogue Theater.

“I think I really learned how to produce shows on a different level at Bay Street,” said Hygom, who began his career by building and designing sets, but was soon given the freedom to curate events for the theater. “Bay Street gave me the opportunity to really start exploring the music and the classic film series.”

Down the road, film screenings will also be a part of Suffolk Theater’s repertoire — hearkening back to the venue’s earliest days — though Hygom stressed that screenings will be limited to rock ‘n’ roll films only.

“We just bought a new laser projector,” Hygom said. “We’re also tweaking the lighting system and are changing the sound system significantly to make the room sound better. So we are getting to a point now where the room will really look and sound like the venue that it should be. It’s going to be one of the best rooms on the island, no question about it.”

Though known primarily as a performance venue, Suffolk Theater also has a good-sized bar and an industrial kitchen, and in the past it functioned as a restaurant, even serving full dinners. But Hygom, who saw firsthand how the Patchogue Theater drew customers to other area businesses, has decided to scale back on food service in order to lend support to nearby restaurants.

“We’ll still do appetizers, but we want people to go eat in town,” Hygom explained, adding that some restaurants are already giving discounts to Suffolk Theater-goers. “We can drive a lot of people into town and lead the revitalization. That’s something we talk about all the time. It’s imperative that a theater be an anchor. It needs to be the driver to really get a town moving.”

When he first arrived at Suffolk Theater, Hygom wasn’t overly familiar with the space and he recalls that one of the first things he wondered about was whether or not the formal Art Deco design of the space would meld with the hard rocking shows he’s looking to offer there.

“It’s so Deco and the design of it is such a presence in the room itself, I was curious — was that going to help dictate the experience that an audience had?” Hygom asked. “In fact, it works fantastically well. It enhances hard rock and I have to say, when we had the New Millennium Jazz Band here, they were amazing. They did a Sinatra night, and the room came to life. We haven’t done anything here that hasn’t worked in this room. It’s a very cool, unique experience.”

Not everything at Suffolk Theater is perfect, though. Perhaps the most substantial challenge Hygom and his staff face is the size of the stage — which, at just 16 feet deep and 30 feet wide, is on the small side. Because it was designed as a cinema, not a traditional theater, it also lacks a backstage area. Right now, a trailer positioned behind the building functions as both the dressing room and green room.

“We have a plan in place to blow out the whole back of the theater — probably in the next three years,” Hygom said, noting that the theater owns enough property to pull off such an expansion. “The stage will be 30 feet deep. We’ll build green rooms, a dressing room and a kitchen in the back.”

Hygom is also looking to make some technical improvements to the space by bringing in an audio consultant from Sound Associates of New York to analyze the theater. “With a room this age, there are always issues — bass traps, areas that are too reflective. We will address those to take care of any audio flaws within the room. The system has shown that when tuned properly, it can do the job,” he said. “A tweak here or there within the room will take us over the top.”

“It’s just a cool room and a great place to see a show. This room became the best-kept secret on Long Island — a forgotten venue that people didn’t notice and we want them to really notice it,” Hygom said. “There’s nowhere like it and it has a great reputation with some of those artists that are still performing and want to come back — like Peter Noone.

“It has a great vibe from the stage as well. Because it’s intimate, you get this interaction with an audience that you don’t get in those big theaters,” he added. “Here, you can see your audience, you can hear them and interact with them, and they love it.”

For Hygom, taking over as artistic director at Suffolk Theater at this juncture offers something of a full-circle experience. He’s happy to be at the helm of a venue that is playing such an important role in the revival of Riverhead’s historic downtown.

“I’ve lived in Wading River or on the North Fork my whole life,” Hygom notes. ‘When downtown Riverhead was the hub, this is where we shopped for clothes and took trumpet lessons.

“Now, you have an aquarium, a theater, green space, public art, museums,” he added. “We’re building community. This town has a lot to offer. Everyone needs to pull together. It’s going to be a fun place. I’m very excited to be here.”

Suffolk Theater is at 118 East Main Street in Riverhead. Check out the summer schedule at suffolktheater.com or call 631-727-4343.