PROMOTIONAL PHOTO Peter Handke: My word!

European intellectuals were already beside themselves before the offending article was published: Handke was "the international moron of the year" (Salman Rushdie), "an ideological monster" (Alain Finkelkraut), "a contributor to the poetic-military complex" (Slajov Zizek).

I was planning to check out Yale Cabaret's presentation, but first placed a call to the German intellectual Stephan Thiele to find out what sort of commotion I might expect. Thiele told me that if a Handke play went up in his town of Bielefelda university town approximately the size of New Haven"there would probably be petitions, protests, that sort of thing."

Heightening the possible tension: The director of the play is Bosnian native Tea Alagic, a witness to the very Serbian atrocities that Handke denies took place. Everything was lined up for a four-star controversy.

Outstanding as the opening-night performance of Self-Accusation was, the controversy was absent. No petitions, no protests. One elderly woman didn't return after intermission, a gesture that, even generously interpreted, doesn't amount to protest.

Why has New Haven missed the Handke scandal boat?

Curiously, the Summer Cabaret's artistic directors, Kristina Mendicino and Alagic, aren't ones to shy away from scandal. Their "manifesto," posted on the web soon after the pair signed on at the Cabaret, was designed to provoke. When the duo selected their shows, sparking controversy was first-and-foremost on their agenda.

What, then, accounts for the quiet? Mendicino pegs it to a lack of "critical vocabulary" in the United States; theater doesn't have much of a role in this country's public life. Or, as Alagic put it: "What creates controversy in this country? Michael Jackson and Monica Lewinsky!"

Alagic's relationship to the play reveals much about the way it's being presented to the public. Alagic claims that Handke's previous pro-Serbian comments had not affected her understanding of the work. "I do not want to be one of those people that judges an artist because of his politics," she says. And considering that Self-Accusation was written almost 40 years ago, that is perhaps an understandable choice.

But, in her attempt to avoid moralizing, Alagic has put up a show completely devoid of explicit political content. This is a shame, because even a short conversation with Alagic reveals that her memories of Bosnia are emotionally rich and raw. Her split of Handke's aesthetics from his politics is also in contradiction with her own manifesto, which claims that a focus on "contemporary issues" will be a priority.

So Mendicino's attributing the play's lack of resonance in town to America's general lack of "critical vocabulary" falls flat. People build a vocabulary by having exposure to new work, and by building off of the vocabulary they already have; these are opportunities, however, that Alagic and Mendecino haven't grabbed.