MOSCOW ART THEATRE TRIMS THE DEADWOOD

Much as one favors public funding for arts institutions, it’s possible to overfeed them. That’s one of the reasons the Soviet government is reexamining its policy toward state theaters.

The Moscow Art Theatre, for example, is undergoing a rather painful “restructuring” at the moment. According to the Christian Science Monitor’s Sophie Quinn-Judge, its 160-member acting company will be divided into two independent troupes, “loosely joined as an association.”

One of the troupes will concentrate on relevant new work, and the other troupe will be . . . the other troupe. There’s talk of this being “a ploy to shed deadwood,” Quinn-Judge writes. Once actors hire on with the MAT, it’s difficult to get rid of them. She quotes an anonymous older member of the company thus: “The main thing is to live until your pension.”

The MAT will face less interference from the Ministry of Culture in the future, but it will also have to pay more of its way. That means that ticket prices will increase. If there were no subsidy at all, a good seat at the MAT would cost 30 rubles ($47.) Current price: three rubles.

The big question at the MAT, writes Quinn-Judge, isn’t ticket prices, deadwood or censorship. It’s the question that every theater asks itself, looking at the week’s latest batch of scripts: Where’s the new Chekhov?

For years the British Theatre Museum was housed in a set of rooms in out-of-the-way Kensington--fairly modest digs for one of the world’s great theater collections. On April 23 it opened a new building in the Covent Garden Flower Market, just a few steps from where Prof. Henry Higgins met Eliza Doolittle. Included in the opening exhibit: Ellen Terry’s handkerchief, David Garrick’s dagger, Henry Irving’s sword and Bea Lillie’s zither.

“Follies” won’t die. Stephen Sondheim’s 1971 musical opens at Houston’s new opera house June 13, starring Juliet Prowse, John Cullum, Patrice Munsel, Licia Albanes, etc. Then comes a new London production that definitely has its eye on Broadway. Rumors are that James Goldman is reworking the book.

Laurence Olivier celebrated his 80th birthday Friday--not too happily, perhaps. He has announced that he’s retired from the stage and feature films, but is still up for radio and TV work. And still amazing. Don’t miss him as a rascally old painter setting down a priggish young art critic (Roger Rees) in “The Ebony Tower” at 2 p.m. Sunday on KCET, Channel 28.

IN QUOTES. Olivier, in his book “On Acting”: “I should be out there holding the old enemy at bay and trying to persuade them to see it my way.”