COMMENTARY : O.C. THEATER : No Letup Yet in Scuffling at Grove Festival : The ‘Twinkie offense’ is the most recent allegation in a continuing battle.

Something peculiar is going on behind the scenes at the Grove Shakespeare Festival, and I am not referring to the forced resignation of founding artistic director Thomas F. Bradac.

Nearly two months have passed since his departure was masterminded by Grove chief Barbara Hammerman, who wants to know why the press doesn’t just forget about it. In case anybody else is wondering, the full story has yet to be told, least of all by theater officials who hint darkly that they could be sued for defamation of character if they said what they know. The innuendo is meant for Bradac, of course, who has been pilloried for declaring that he resents the treatment he received.

I can’t say that I blame Hammerman for wanting the sorry mess to go away, especially since the lack of candor emanating from the theater about it seems tantamount to a cover-up of shameful secrets. Given the insults and accusations being tossed around at the Grove between the pro- and anti-Bradac factions, the whole thing comes off like a backstage pie fight; Hammerman herself resembles a Mack Sennett version of Lady Macbeth looking terribly indignant about getting hit in the kisser with a wad of custard.

The most recent allegation--and the strangest yet--is what might be called the “Twinkie offense.” The Grove board of trustees has accused the pro-Bradac forces of spending hundreds of dollars in scarce theater funds on junk food. According to board president Tom Moon, one of the Grove’s two fund-raising guilds bought nearly “$700 worth of candy and M&Ms;” for the actors--without authorization--as a parting gesture after guild members resigned en masse to protest Bradac’s ouster. Moon and Hammerman are consulting with bank officials on how, or if, restitution will be sought.

“We are certainly not going to burn them at the cross,” said Moon, noting that “nothing criminal” had occurred. “It’s hand-spanking time, not horse-whipping time.”

Charlotte Lopez, who headed the now-disbanded Grove Shakespeare Festival Guild, denies any wrongdoing. She says she informed Hammerman of the expenditure ahead of time and that no objection was raised. It was only after the money was spent, she said, that the board sent her a letter of inquiry and that Hammerman’s minion, Grove general manager Charles Johanson, accused Lopez of “misappropriating funds.” For his part, Johanson claims he merely asked Lopez if she didn’t think the use of the funds was “inappropriate.”

Lopez added, moreover, that the money did not go for junk food, but for four pre-show meals for the cast of the current production, “Measure for Measure,” instead of a customary opening-night party.

Meanwhile, the subtext in the alleged Twinkie offense is that Bradac’s wife, Anne Barolet, who was treasurer of the guild, signed the check for the grocer’s bill and made it seem that the goodies were personal gifts to the cast from Bradac and herself.

Barolet not only denies the expenditure was wrong but points out that the guild raised at least $30,000 for the Grove over the past five years, while Hammerman’s own track record as the theater’s chief fund-raiser is “worse than poor” and bears closer examination.

I tried to get from Hammerman exactly how much she has raised in corporate contributions this year, but that proved impossible. She said she did not know exactly. I said a round figure would do. She said she did not know a round figure either. Well, I asked, could she get back to me with any figure? She said she could by day’s end. I said she could even take all night and call me in the morning. The next morning I got a message that she would call me at noon with the information. Noon came and went. And then at last she called (from a public phone booth, she wanted me to know). But, no, she still didn’t have the corporate figure, either in exact or round numbers.

I wouldn’t make as much of this as I have if the entire procedure were not typical of Hammerman, who likes to tout herself as a hands-on manager but who, in my experience, rarely has any details at her fingertips. It’s not as if the information was so arcane that it had to be researched at length. When I mentioned this, Hammerman reminded me again that she was, after all, at a public phone booth--as though I had called her there and not the other way around.

The outcome of this little inquiry was resolved when it was suggested that if she didn’t have the information somebody else must. And indeed somebody else did. According to Johanson, the theater has received $8,000 in corporate contributions and $2,500 from foundations between January and August of 1991. That is a mere fraction of Hammerman’s budget projection of $115,000 in corporate contributions for the year. It is also less than half her annual part-time salary of $33,000.

Given the theater’s tenuous finances--depending on whom you talk to, it needs to raise $130,000 to $150,000 by year’s end to balance the budget--the Grove board directed Hammerman in May to intensify her fund-raising efforts by devoting three-fourths of her time to seeking philanthropic contributions. But both she and Moon seem to be suffering from amnesia when it comes to recognizing that responsibility as essential to her role.

“My job is not fund-raising,” she said flatly last week when asked to define her responsibilities. Moon concurred: “As I understood it, Barbara was not hired as a fund-raiser.”

Unfortunately, Moon understood wrong. Various clauses in Hammerman’s employment contract, as Moon should know, state in no uncertain terms that “fund development” is one of her four “chief responsibilities,” the others being “financial management,” “marketing” and “liaison with the board.” Further, her contract specifically directs that she must “maintain communication with the funding community on behalf of the theater.”

When confronted with these terms verbatim, Hammerman did one of those breathtaking turnabouts that is also typical of her management style: “Part of my job, sure, is fund-raising,” she allowed. “You’re right. Of course I do have to do fund-raising.”

When Hammerman was hired as the Grove’s “managing director/executive vice president” in February of 1990, she went out of her way to portray herself as an expert fund-raiser, pointing to her role as executive director of the Tustin-based Community Foundation of the Jewish Federation of Orange County. (She continues to hold a job there, dividing her time between the foundation and the theater.)

What I didn’t know, however, but have since been told, is that at the time of her hiring, Hammerman (who had no experience running a theater) led her Grove associates to believe she was entertaining the possibility of a job as director of development for South Coast Repertory. Former Grove managing director Richard A. Stein, a Hammerman ally who groomed her as his replacement before taking over the top post at the Laguna Playhouse, acknowledges that she told him she was being considered by SCR. Bradac also says Hammerman told him about an overture from SCR. And others at the Grove heard remarks to that effect.

The implication--that she was being courted by the county’s largest and wealthiest theater--certainly would have bolstered her credibility as a candidate to head the Grove.

But was she really in the running for anything at SCR? Hammerman refuses to comment. “I’m not going to respond,” she said. “I don’t think that’s an appropriate question.”

What makes it appropriate, though, is whether she was telling the truth or simply trying to manipulate the climate of opinion at the financially strapped Grove about her theatrical fund-raising abilities.

SCR general manager Paula Tomei said, when asked last week, that Hammerman’s name never came up as a candidate for the job of SCR development director (which Bonnie Brittain Hall was then in the process of vacating). SCR producing artistic director David Emmes said through a spokesman that Hammerman “had expressed an interest in the job” but that “she was not among the people interviewed.”

Be that as it may, Hammerman has no one to blame but herself for the friend-or-foe pie fight at the Grove; not Bradac, who has paid for his faults as a less-than-executive-minded artistic manager; not the Twinkie offenders, who deny the allegation against them; not the 35 actors and technicians who signed a public letter of protest chastising the Grove for its actions, and not the press, which has the right to report on a pie fight when it sees one.