Should I stay or should I go?

The Seattle Times reported Tuesday, in a front-page story, that Bart Sher is leaving as artistic director of the city's Intiman Theatre. SeattlePI.com, which doesn't have a "front page" any more, reported that Sher is staying. Both are, apparently, correct. Sher plans to leave Intiman at the end of 2010. His successor, alreay chosen but not yet identified by Intiman brass, will work as some sort of understudy director for a year before taking the reins. This rather odd arrangement is called a "multi-year succession plan" on Intiman's Web site.

Weisenheimer isn't a big fan of Sher. In fact, we're awfully perplexed at the ga-ga boy genius staus that Sher seems to have attained. Especially puzzling are the accolades heaped on The Light in the Piazza, a Tony Award winner despite being as mundane a piece of bilge as ever produced.

We had great hope for Sher when he first arrived in town. As fans of the Bard, we were delighted that he produced Coriolanus and Titus Andronicus. But recent history has not been so great. We thought Sher's Richard III was totally botched a couple of years ago. And the Intiman stage has been littered with klinkers for quite some time, leading us to drop a long-standing subscription to the theater. The saving grace is that Sher, too busy with his New York projects, is not going to direct the Intiman production of Othello this year as originally announced. But it won't be a local production, either. They're bringing in a staging from New York's Theatre for a New Audience.

We're glad to give up Sher to the New York audiences. We hope his succession plan doesn't lead to more of the same from Intiman.