‘Hamlet’ Premiere Will Give Globe Theatre Rebuilding a Boost : Stage: Sam Wanamaker is spearheading the drive to re-create the London theater where the story of the melancholy Dane was first performed.

Guests who attend a star-studded premiere of Franco Zeffirelli’s “Hamlet” at Mann’s Village Theater at 7 in Westwood tonight won’t be supporting just another movie adapted from a play by Shakespeare. They’ll be helping re-create the theater in which many of his plays were first performed in the 16th Century.

The Globe Theatre, on the south bank of London’s Thames, is about to rise again. It burned down in 1613, 14 years after it was built. Shakespeare was its joint owner and resident playwright; in its short life, it was the site of the first performances of “Hamlet,” “Macbeth,” “King Lear” and “Twelfth Night,” among others. The Globe was rebuilt after its catastrophic fire, but shut down in 1642 when Britain’s Puritans under Oliver Cromwell closed all playhouses. Two years later, it was torn down.

The benefit tonight, which includes a reception at the Armand Hammer Museum of Art and Cultural Center, could raise as much as $1 million for the Globe complex.

That it is being held at all is a tribute to the determination of American actor-director Sam Wanamaker, whose dream of re-creating the Globe first hatched 40 years ago, about two decades after he arrived in England.

The “Hamlet” benefit evening for the Globe came about because Wanamaker and the film’s star, Mel Gibson, have the same agent, Ed Limato of ICM. “When I heard Mel was about to do ‘Hamlet,’ I was surprised, like a lot of people,” said Wanamaker. “Then it came to my mind that its premiere would be an ideal fund-raiser for the Globe.”

“Mel was very agreeable, so were the producers, and Warner Bros., who are distributing the film, agreed to support us too. Mel has five kids of his own and he has a personal interest in getting Shakespeare across to young people. Of course, the Globe will be an international educational center as well as a theater.”

Extraordinary attention has been paid to making the new Globe as near to the original as possible; it will be the first all-wooden building completed in London since the city was virtually destroyed by the Great Fire of 1666.

Construction is due to start early February only 200 yards from its original site on an 18-million ($35.5 million) complex, whose centerpiece is a remarkable replica of the original--a three-tier theater in the round.

When Wanamaker arrived in Britain in 1949, he was appalled to see that the only visible sign of the Globe was a modest plaque. In 1970, he embarked on concrete plans to get the Globe rebuilt. He has a small office in the narrow south London back streets adjacent to the Globe, and at the slightest bidding he will leap up and show a visitor around the new site. At the moment, it’s nothing but a large hole in the ground, with foundations built and a perimeter wall to stop water from the Thames from seeping in.

“But look over there!” he roars, gesturing across the river. “That’s the best view of St. Paul’s in all of London!”

“It’s going to be remarkable ,” says Wanamaker, swaggering a little. “This is more than just the rebuilding of the Globe, creating some kind of monument to Shakespeare which he doesn’t need. His books are his monuments. But this will be a major center for the study of Shakespeare in performance.

“We are making the only faithful effort to restore the theater in every respect as close to the original as possible. We think that performing these plays in this theater will recover elements of his plays which we haven’t been able to appreciate or enjoy because we haven’t had this facility.”

To this end, natural light will illuminate almost all performances, the majority of which will be staged in summer. No sound amplification will be used. And most of the 1,500 members of the audiences will stand to watch plays in the “pit” or cockpit, just as their counterparts did in the early 1600s.

Fire regulations mean that the staircases in the Globe must be wider than the original, and a sprinkler system has to be installed. But Elizabethan joinery methods have been used in the theater’s wooden construction, and all seats will be backless benches.

Wanamaker believes that within the confines of the “wooden O,” audiences will have such a different kind of theatergoing experience that discomfort will be less significant.

“You get a tremendous body of people surrounding the stage, with actors communicating directly with them eye to eye. The difference is enormous in terms of the frisson you get from being addressed directly.” Audiences, he thinks, may feel moved to respond vocally, just as they did in Shakespeare’s day.

He has corralled an impressive list of names for his directorate--actors Dame Judi Dench, Derek Jacobi and Jane Lapotaire, and directors Steven Berkoff and Declan Donnellan among them.

Sadly, Wanamaker’s own career as an actor and director has been limited by his involvement with the Globe, which he reckons takes up two-thirds of his year.

“Now I do perhaps three films or 17 TV movies a year,” he says. “I take jobs which will pay me as much as I can get in the shortest possible time so I can come back to be here.”

Currently, he’s looking ahead to Shakespeare’s birthday--April 23, 1993--when it is anticipated the first performance at the new Globe will take place.

By then, Wanamaker hopes the entire Globe complex will be complete, including a smaller Jacobean theater.