THEATER DIRECTOR'S BITTER FAREWELL

THEATER DIRECTOR’S BITTER FAREWELL

By DAN SULLIVAN

Feb. 7, 1987 12 AM PT

Times Theater Critic

When artistic directors resign in Germany, they really resign. Peter Zadek has just left his post as director of the Hamburg City Theatre with the recommendation that the theater might just as well “be turned into a brothel.”

Marl Heinrich of the Associated Press reports that Zadek left his post after only 18 months, declaring himself fed up with know-it-all reviewers and a know-nothing audience.

Zadek opened with a hit, “Ghetto,” but since then has had no luck with the Hamburg press and public. His current show, “Pravda,” a hit in London, is playing to only 25% of capacity. (The theater seats 1,400.)

Zadek’s un-fond farewell statement included slams at the city’s “press mafia” and its “culture smart set.” He said he was sick of being “a museum caretaker, polishing the statues in the playhouse.”

Zadek’s productions in other German cities were praised, or at least noticed, for their daring. (He once did an “Othello” where Desdemona had a lesbian scene with her maid.) But Hamburg was not impressed. That apparently included the acting company. Actor Will Quadflieg accused Zadek of a “snotty” and “irresponsible” attitude towards his audience.

Steve Tesich’s “Division Street” was a big hit for the Mark Taper Forum six years ago, but the Broadway critics didn’t buy it. Now it’s back Off Broadway at the Second Stage. Michael Kuchwara of the Associated Press found the production “overwrought,” but thought that the play had “a goofy charm,” and wondered if “a third try might be the lucky one.”

“Wild Honey” didn’t last on Broadway, but its star, Ian McKellen, is staying in the States for a while. Currently he’s performing his one-man show, “Ian McKellen Acting Shakespeare,” at the Marines Memorial Theater in San Francisco.

McKellen told the San Francisco Chronicle’s Steven Winn that he could write a book about what went wrong with “Wild Honey” in New York, “though not one of recriminations or wild accusations. The fact is that Broadway is now almost exclusively tourist theater, and what tourists want are long-running musicals.”

Stage Wire has received another claim that Shakespeare was a Frenchman. John Holmes’ new book, “Guillaume Chequespierre and the Oise Salon” (Harper and Row, $10), states that the poet was born in the village of Stratte-Forte sur Avon and did the bulk of his work in Paris.

For proof, Holmes’ anthology cites many famous Chequespierre-ean lines in their original spelling. For instance the following, from “Macbeth”:

Tue moraux, Anne, tue moraux, Anne, tue moraux!

And this, from “Hamlet” (“Omelette”):

Tout pille or, note, tout pille, date hisse de caisse tiens!

And this, from “Richard III”:

Ah os! Ah os! Maille qui ne d’homme fourra os.

“Those who find pronunciation difficult,” says Holmes in his foreword, “should consult a dictionary. Those who find the footnotes helpful should consult a psychiatrist.”

QUOTE OF THE WEEK. Woody Guthrie: “I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good.”