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The entertainer By Kobi Ben-Simhon Tags: Tel Aviv, Menahem Golan  In a faded rehearsal room in a cellar in the center of Tel Aviv, Menahem Golan is sitting on a high director's chair. His hands are crossed. "You run to here and then he starts," Golan explains to the actress Pazit Yaron-Minkovsky. "That's it, exactly, open the door," he instructs her, alert and taut. At the age of 79, Golan, an Israel Prize laureate for cinema, has gone back to his first love, the theater. Fifty-seven years have passed since he established the Shdera Theater, which he has now decided to resurrect. "When I am asked why suddenly now, I reply that it's not so sudden. After all, this was the start of my artistic career as a youngster in Habimah [the national theater company]. I think people have somewhat forgotten that chapter of my life, but that's actually where it all began." He has aged - his eyes are weak and red, his legs a bit heavy - but he is as happy and excited as a boy. Waiting for the stage lights, for the new audiences, for the prolonged applause. "This whole story simply thrills me," he says in a bemused tone. "The posters are already printed, and this thing is going to be a huge hit." Golan intends to turn first to the periphery, to mount his productions in "thirsty places," as he puts it. "I believe in a new theater and I am certain that there is a place for it," he insists. "Everywhere in the world there is a division between commercial theater, which stages musicals and comedies, and classical theater. But not in Israel. The big theater companies produce new classical works, and apart from them there is only standup and amateur theater. I want to change that." Advertisement Golan loves nostalgia. The play he chose to launch his wandering theater later this month is "A Funny Thing Happened to Mrs. Aliza Mizrahi." The play, which was produced by the Shdera Company in its previous incarnation in 1952, is about a cleaning woman in a Tel Aviv office who turns amateur detective and helps solve a series of mysterious murders. "It's a thriller," he says. "It opens with the cleaning woman finding a body on the desk of the vice president of an insurance company one night. She calls the police, but by the time the police arrive the body has disappeared," Golan says with unabashed enthusiasm. "In 1967 I did a film adaptation of the play, which was a blockbuster hit. The legendary actress Edna Fliedel made her career in that movie, alongside actors like Avner Hizkiyahu, Yossi Banai, Arik Lavie, Shmulik Kraus and Uri Zohar." The cast of the revived version of the play includes Michal Zuaretz, Nir Levy and Albert Iluz. That trio, together with the actor Tzachi Noy, will be the mainstay of Golan's vision. "The most important thing for achieving a perfect play is the right choice of actors," Golan explains. "You have to find actors who can play the roles, particularly in comedy. And these are comics with a wealth of experience, actors who can deliver humor in the most natural way, who are simply good at making the audience laugh. I feel that they are right for my concept, but that doesn't mean it's enough for me. I do the final test - does it work? - on the audience itself. And there are no compromises. If a scene doesn't make the audience burst into laughter within a minute, I cut it. For me, a minute without laughter is too much. In this play I want an hour and a half of laughter. And not just laughter - I want people to fall off their seats." "That's Menahem Golan, the man and the legend," the actor Nir Levy says with a half-smile, as Golan's business partner, producer Zvi Lahat, looks on. "When he is not pleased, he shouts and curses, because he lives it. He is a man of purpose, a no-nonsense guy who wants results. If an actor gets him those results, he is as happy as a little boy. Sometimes during the rehearsals, when he sees something he likes, he asks us to do the same scene over and over, because it makes him feel good. I have the highest regard for his work. He is straightforward and intuitive." Iluz adds that during rehearsals of this kind, "we, like Menahem, dig into our youth album. Just as he sees this as a kind of closing of a circle for him, I too feel that I am closing a circle together with him. I made several attempts during my career to work with Menahem, but it didn't happen. For me, this is a dream come true. As an actor, I am interested in working with the source, not with a director who works on material written by someone else. A director for whom it is all his, who breathes the spirit of the work. When you work with him, you feel that he sees the finished product before his eyes." In addition to "A Funny Thing," Shdera will also stage the musical "Oliver!" In this case, the Dickens classic takes a slightly different direction: "Tzachi Noy will teach a group of 30 children from [the city of] Modi'in how to steal. It will start with day camps in the summer and continue into Sukkot and Hanukkah," Golan says. "I start from places that Habimah and the Cameri Theater do not reach. The outlying towns in Israel are neglected. In Europe, every provincial town puts on a theatrical show every two weeks, because theater is part of the way of life there. I intend to do what the big theaters have forgotten - to take risks, hit the road and invite an audience." Didn't you consider staging these plays at Habimah or the Cameri? "Those places like young directors. Avant-garde types. They don't want me there; they don't invite me, and even when I propose something they are not interested. Maybe the managers there did not find my work of any value, I don't know. But when I do theater of my own, I don't wait for work. I will go to places like Be'er Sheva, Safed and Afula instead. These days the country is filled with halls with 400 to 600 seats. There is a hall and a stage in every town and village, but no one to appear in them. What a pity. It is very costly for big theaters to go on the road, and they lose money. I intend to do small, compact plays and that way fill the cultural void. My theater will fulfill a function that currently doesn't exist: entertainment for the masses." Between London and Hollywood Golan's obsession to create stems from a deficiency. "I grew up in Tiberias and was very thin. My mother used to take me to Safed, to the hills, so I would breathe in oxygen and fatten up. Because I was so thin, I did not stand out in soccer or other sports, and I think that my love of the theater started because of that. I was looking for a place where I could stand out. I remember plays that were staged in Tiberias, such as 'The Eternal Jew' and "The Dybbuk.' I absolutely waited for the theater to come. Because I didn't have money to buy tickets, I helped the stagehands lug stuff around, and in return they got me into the plays free." The thin kid experienced something similar in the movie theater, when he helped screen the movies every day in the Aviv Cinema in Tiberias. "I think that is when I fell in love with the movies, even if I did not know where it would lead me. I saw all the westerns that reached Israel, all the musicals. I think that the main effect of those experiences was to spur me to search for the big things in life." During his military service, he was in the 12th Battalion of the Golani infantry brigade and fought on the Syrian front in the War of Independence. "I was Moshe Dayan's radio operator, but in the first cease-fire I requested a transfer to the air force. I thought that if I got into the air force, I would be able to go abroad from there in order to study. They put me into the second pilots course, and I completed the first stage, but when we were told we would have to sign up for three years in the career army, I balked. In the end I served as a bomb thrower - I threw bombs manually out of cargo planes onto Gaza and the whole south." After the war, Golan studied theater at the London Academy of Music and Drama, then went on to the famed Old Vic school in Bristol. Three years later he returned to Israel, married Rachel, whom he had met during his army service, and started to work as an assistant director in Habimah. Two years later, in 1954, he moved to the satirical theater Hamatateh (The Broom), where he first met the writer Ephraim Kishon. "The theater had just acquired the rights to his play 'You're Telling Me.' Kishon didn't know a word of Hebrew - the play was in Hungarian. We staged the play and it was a tremendous success. From there things moved fast. I switched to the Ohel Theater, where I did Igal Mossinsohn's 'El Dorado,' which afterward became my first film. After nearly eight years of intensive work in the theater, I felt I had had enough. I wanted the cinema." In 1960, Golan went to New York University to study film, and when he returned to Israel in 1963 he made "El Dorado," starring Haim Topol and Gila Almagor. A year later, he and his cousin, Yoram Globus, established a production company called Noah Films. The two made a large number of films together, including Israeli blockbusters such as "Sallah Shabati," "Eskimo Limon," "Kazablan" and "Mivsta Yonatan," about the Entebbe operation, which was nominated for an Oscar in the Best Foreign Film category. So was "Sallah Shabati," which also won the Golden Globe award in that category. Golan and Globus then went to Hollywood to try their luck. In 1978, they bought a small production company, the Cannon Group, and within a few years acquired the status of meta-producers. By 1987, their company was producing 35 films a year, among them "Over the Top" with Sylvester Stallone and other action films in which some of Golan's discoveries starred, such as Chuck Norris, Jean-Claude Van Damme and Sharon Stone. "We invested between $1 million and $5 million in each film," Golan says. "Those were unheard of budgets in Hollywood, where films cost $35 million to $50 million. We succeeded big-time. During those ten years in Hollywood, my salary was a million dollars a year." However, the Golan-Globus winning streak ended in a colossal failure. The Cannon Group incurred large debts and was eventually sold, and Golan returned to Israel in the mid-1990s and began to direct theater musicals. Of these the best remembered is "The Sound of Music," with Hani Nahmias in the lead role. "We made an economic mistake," Golan admits ruefully. "Yoram insisted on buying movie theaters in Europe. We bought all the movie theaters in England, Holland and France. A thousand movie theaters. We ran up very large debts in that project. It was a mistake. I wanted us to be involved exclusively in film production, because I knew that we were good at making films cheaply and selling them. The European move led to a big argument between me and Yoram, which developed into a dispute. We didn't speak for some years." Inspired by De Sica Golan's present plans are large-scale and detailed. In the year ahead he plans to stage both the French comedy "The Idiot," by Marcelle Achard (1899-1974), which was the basis for the film "A Shot in the Dark," and Neil Simon's "Promises, Promises." "I want to start with things that are less dangerous - comedies that will draw the public. After that I will move on to other things. I want to revive the drama 'Johnny Belinda,' a story about the rape of a deaf-mute girl in the American South. But I will start with comedies, because the public loves to laugh." His models for the theater come from England and France. "The theaters in those countries have a method that works wonderfully well," Golan says, "and I want to use it, too. We sign the actors to a contract for a minimum of 30 performances. After we pass the 30 mark, we either raise their salaries or drop the play. If I want to stage a play, I have to be sure it will justify itself economically, because I do not intend to rely on either foundations or state funds. The production is done within a budget and with the aim of covering the costs. That is a risk, because commercial theater of this kind never takes off. The big theaters have subscribers, and that is what sustains them. I will not have subscribers, so I have to attract the public. I have to." Doesn't "public taste," which is so important to you, clash with your creativity? "For me, the very act of dramatic creation, whether in the theater or the cinema, is art. I create a living world, characters, a story, out of nothing. I like to liken myself to the troubadours of medieval times. They sat in the marketplace with their mandolins and people in the market came to listen to them. They had to turn on the audience. That is how I perceive my art." And how do you go about turning on the audience? "You tell them stories that are far more optimistic than their life stories. My task is to use the stage to portray life that is bigger and better than the lives of the spectators. I think that people in this world are lonely, and through my illusions I fashion better worlds. That is a very important point for me. I want the audience to enjoy itself. I love to hear the laughter and see the tears." Is the idea also to provide culture at a more popular level? "I connect myself to the surroundings, and the surroundings are popular. I was very influenced in my work by the Italians who created cinematic neo-realism, such as Vittorio De Sica. That great director, who made 'The Bicycle Thief' and 'Miracle in Milan,' evoked the beauty in the life of the poor in Italy. He took the stories from the suburbs. I feel the same way, the feeling weighs on me. I am not one of those who do classical theater. The plays I do are amusing, and they always contain a wonderful story. My work comes out of a love of life. Let's just say that the intellectual critics will again not be blown away." That's something that has accompanied you all along - the frosty, disdainful reviews. "Throughout my entire artistic career. I was never shown mercy. I have no regard for the Israeli critics. They are frustrated artists who did not succeed in getting anywhere by themselves, so they become critics and are unwilling to accept the fact that someone else did it in their place. I remember that the reviews of my film 'The Magician of Lublin' - based on the Bashevis Singer novel - in Austria, Germany and France were incredible. The film was compared to the work of Ingmar Bergman. Of course I do not view myself as being even close to the category of Bergman, the greatest of directors, but in Israel I was slaughtered. Not one good word. Not one. In Israel I enjoy the love of the audience. That is what I have." Touching home The phone never stops ringing all afternoon, after Golan returns to his home in Jaffa. He answers in English. He has no rest and his gaze seems fixed on some other place. His daily schedule is divided between the Shdera Theater and international correspondence relating to the production of his new film, "Badenheim." Golan has been working on the screenplay, which is adapted from Aharon Appelfeld's novel "Badenheim 1939," for more than four years. "I have done many versions," he says in a low tone of voice, "and I have had many meetings with Appelfeld. I learned a great deal from him. Especially silence. He talked to me a lot about how the Jews locked their suffering inside and were not outspoken. That is why I kept the script remote from outbursts. From volcanic eruptions." He remembers hearing Hitler's name at home as a boy. Now it is coming back to him. "I remember that my father went to Poland to persuade his father to leave Europe. I was 9. But granddad, who was a lumber merchant, did not want to go. 'Who will hurt us in Europe, the cradle of culture?' he asked. 'How can he kill us all?' That is exactly what Appelfeld wrote about, about how, a moment before the looming disaster, the Jews entertain themselves in a resort town, dancing, fucking, living in some sort of illusion that it will pass. Like it was a cloud." Why did you not deal with your family story until now? "Maybe because I was not ripe to do so. There were films like Spielberg's 'Schindler's List' and Benigni's 'Life Is Beautiful.' Later came Polanski's 'The Pianist.' After them I was afraid to touch the subject. Nearly every film that dealt with the Holocaust was phenomenally successful throughout the world, and that blocked me." How were you able to overcome that barrier? "I can't escape anymore. For years I lacked the courage, but something happened to me after I read Appelfeld's book. I felt my family, my grandfather, who was murdered along with 50 members of our family. For a long time there was quiet in our home - we were waiting for letters that never arrived. This is the first time I have dealt with an element of my biography. I have never touched this subject, which is so close to me. It was always a memory that occupied me, that has resided in me since childhood, but it never emerged into my creative work. In the whole 60 years of my career, this will be the first time I take my childhood memories out of the house."W Bookmark to del.icio.us   Fragile cease-fire Olmert: Gaza cease-fire is fragile, may be short lived. 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