But Riedel proposes an explanation for the play's failure that Healy has thus far neglected: a bad advertising deal with The Times itself. Riedel reports:

The Times offered the producers of Brighton Beach several weeks worth of splashy ads in the paper and on its Web site at steep discounts, production sources say.

In exchange for what one source calls the "fire sale" price, The Times demanded exclusivity.

Brighton Beach couldn't advertise anywhere else until after opening night.

No radio spots, no e-mail blasts, no direct-mail campaign -- none of the things most shows do to generate advance sales. . . .

"It was a pilot program," one source says. "It was supposed to be secret. And it crashed and burned."

More or less plausible, as a fatal flaw, than the play's failure to be Michael Jackson?

The Times grapples with this turn of events in a 1225-word article by Patrick Healy. Among the explantions it puts forth for the failure of Brighton Beach Memoirs:

- No Jude Law

- No "Wow" factor

- Collective lack of interest in watching "a Depression-era family laughing through the tears"--possibly because of current economic woes? This explanation is not discussed but perhaps implied.

- Not a musical

- Neil Simon was "a forefather of situation comedy writers." Situation comedy has been supplanted in American taste by "reality shows like American Idol," the "sardonic humor of The Office," the "animated wit of Up," and the "fratty banter of The Hangover."

- Lacked "frissons of fear and panic just beneath the surface humor"

- Not "raw and edgy," like Judd Apatow

- Not big enough, like Twilight or Michael Jackson:

Popular culture has also developed a bigger-is-better, entertainment-as-event attitude that runs counter to the ethos of the typical Simon play. Stadium-arena rock concerts, the "Harry Potter" and "Twilight" book and film series, the days-long cable news coverage of Michael Jackson's death, the ever-increasing punch of season finales on television dramas - these do not have equivalents in the Simon canon and are not staples of Broadway.

I hope this clears things up.

It’s a memory play about growing up in a poor Brooklyn Jewish family in the years just before World War II, and, like any memory play about growing up in Brooklyn, it’s got its youthful protagonist—Eugene Morris Jerome, Mr. Simon’s stand-in—imagining himself pitching for the Yankees, tossing a ball in the street, wearing knickers and pining for girls. Equally de rigueur, there’s an elevated-subway track overhead and the sound of a passing El as the curtain goes up after the prologue.

The Simonian shtick at first seems dated and clichéd, too: One of Eugene’s early monologues revolves around the Jewish-grandparent habit of whispering when mentioning the names of deadly diseases—his Uncle Dave died of (shhh!) cancer—and I’m sure I’ve seen any number of curly-haired, flannel-clad slackers do the bit in front of various brick walls on Comedy Central. Even Eugene himself—played with enthusiasm, energy and charisma by a fresh-faced Noah Robbins, a newcomer who has deferred his Columbia acceptance for a year—is overburdened with his waving arms and one-liners, a 15-year-old Woody Allen.

But then, about midway through the first act, you settle into Mr. Simon’s world, and it all starts to work.

That early whispered-disease joke may now be a staple, but the play debuted in 1983—quite likely, Mr. Simon invented that bit. Eugene may be borscht-belty, but he’s a young Mr. Simon—how could he not be?

As the play progresses, director David Cromer brings out not just Brighton Beach’s broad comedy but also its emotion, the tenuousness and sadness of its characters’ lives. It becomes a sensitive portrait of a very different New York existence, only a few generations removed. (When Jack Jerome, the hardworking paterfamilias, says that he never got past the eighth grade, “and that’s why I spend half my life on the subway and the other half trying to make a few extra dollars to keep this family from being out on the street,” I was suddenly reminded that my grandfather didn’t, either.) The cynic’s wariness melts; his heart, he is a little embarrassed to say, is even warmed.

The superb cast is led by Laurie Metcalf, the Roseanne star who last year gave a credible portrayal of a less-than-credible character in David Mamet’s mediocre November. As Kate Jerome, she expertly plays Mr. Simon’s perhaps overwrought Jewish-mother comedy (“A roller skate? On my kitchen floor? Do you want me dead, is that what you want?”) while also effectively conveying that the weight of the world—or at least the weight of running a seven-person household on little money in hard times—is, in fact, on her shoulders. (The towering set—sliced-open two story house, street in front, yard alongside—is by Jon Lee Beatty and connoted to me more middle-class respectability than impoverished resignation.)

And Santino Fontana, as big brother Stanley, maintains a movingly affectionate brotherly rapport with Mr. Robbins’ Eugene. When Stanley, ashamed to have lost his week’s wages in a poker game, decides to leave the family and says goodbye to his brother, the cynic’s eyes might even moisten a bit, too.

With his minimalist, modern-dress Our Town, which opened last winter at the tiny Barrow Street Theatre, Mr. Cromer gave what can be a hackneyed period piece a fresh look and a bracing currency. At the Nederlander, his reinterpretation is far less radical (of course, Neil Simon is a famously demanding author; Thornton Wilder has the decency to be dead) but also less successful: Our Town became universal; Brighton Beach’s charms, while manifest, I suspect will remain limited to those who whisper disease names (and those of us descended from them).

But that’s all right: They’re the people who buy Neil Simon tickets.

“THEY LOVE US over there,” the chauffeur John says to the mistress of his English country estate, Miss Julie, as the two are fantasizing post-coitally about the nightclub they’ll open in New York. “They die for the accent.”

Well, maybe. But After Miss Julie, which opened in the Roundabout Theatre Company’s American Airlines Theatre last week, is asking a lot in exchange for some received pronunciation.

Miss Julie is August Strindberg’s 1888 drama about a Swedish aristocrat into kinky sex who has a class-defying one-night stand with her father’s manservant and then kills herself out of some mix of shame, desperation, regret and simple psychosis. It was scandalous in its time—and was apparently banned in many places—because of its frank treatment of sex.

After Miss Julie is Miss Julie as adapted by the English playwright Patrick Marber, who modernizes the story—well, “modernizes” the story—to England in 1945, on the night of Labor’s landslide electoral victory.

In other words, instead of being a story about century-old Swedish class mores and no-longer-particularly taboo sex, it is a story about half-century-old English class mores and no-longer-particularly taboo sex. No wonder it was rapturously received in London when it was presented at the Donmar Warehouse in 2003. Brits, after all, care about British class issues.

New Yorkers, however, mostly do not, and that makes for a sometimes wearying 90 minutes.

Miss Julie and her father’s chauffeur, John, dance together (scandalously, for its time and place) and dance around each other, alternatingly seducing and condemning each other, alternatingly confessing love for each other and reveling in power over the other. They plot to run off together; they plot to abandon each other. Not unlike in the current revival of Oleanna, a key point of tension doesn’t exist for the audience—there, campus gender politics, here British class issues—and we’re left instead with a study in manipulation, a question of who is using whom.

Sienna Miller, the intriguing indie film star making her Broadway debut, is well cast in the role, lovely, radiant and blindingly blond, an upper-crust femme fatale with perfect posture and better diction. She’s histrionic in the play’s second half, but, then, so is the character. She never really seems out of control, however; never seems to be actually mad. Instead, she seems like a confident girl in over her head, a manipulator who’s been out-manipulated.

Jonny Lee Miller, also in his first Broadway appearance, is her lover and antagonist, dark, handsome, brooding and magnetic. He acquits himself better, cleanly moving from a servant’s deference to a charmer’s seduction to a resentful servant’s sadistic pleasure in power. Marin Ireland—who dominated in Neil LaBute’s Reasons to Be Pretty last season—is impressive as Christine, the house’s cook and John’s long-suffering common-law fiancée. She manages to hold the audience’s attention through a meticulously choreographed lengthy silent scene in which she cleans up her kitchen after having been left behind by John and Miss Julie, dutifully folding clothes, then primping herself, then growing bored and eventually falling asleep.

Elsewhere in Mark Brokaw’s direction, though, the pacing can seem off—the first half of the short play seems to drag on interminably. Allen Moyer’s detailed set of a country-house kitchen—complete with running water and working stove—puts a ceiling on the room, effectively dropping the proscenium height by nearly half and creating out of the otherwise sprawling kitchen more of a pressure cooker. Mark McCullough’s lighting is remarkably detailed, shifting the world outside the kitchen from night to day and bathing the crazed lovers in their own glow, even when the set around them is shadowy and menacing.

As the play ends, Miss Julie walks out of the kitchen, into that blazing morning sun, implicitly to slit her own throat. She’s been humiliated by a servant, which in mid-century England might have been horrifying. But in new-century New York, posh accent or not, it’s hard to care.

AVENUE Q WAS already in a low-rent neighborhood—its protagonist, the recent-college-grad puppet Princeton, armed with only a B.A. in English and an ambition to find a purpose, tells his new neighbors that he’d started his apartment hunt on Avenue A and kept going till he found a place he could afford—but the economic downturn has thrown it, like many others, out of its home and into a cheaper one. After six years and change on Broadway, it closed last month at the Golden Theatre and then reopened last week Off Broadway at New World Stages.

The new production feels lower-rent, too. Maybe because of the size of the venue, or the size of the orchestra, or just the several-replacements-later nature of the cast, it lacks some of the excitement of the original. But—and here’s the Sesame Street–suitable happy ending—it’s still utterly delightful.

Even six years later, the show is still gleefully subversive—you never quite get used to Muppet-style puppets fucking—and still hilarious. (It should be noted, however, that Anika Larsen, who plays Princeton’s two love interests, the winsome Kate Monster and the vampish Lucy and is a veteran of the final Broadway cast, could belt to the back row of the biggest Broadway house.) The songs (by Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx, with book by Jeff Whitty) are, if anything, better: not just tuneful melodies with witty lyrics, but, in a few cases, now genuine members of the show-tunes canon. (At least, so says any weekend at Marie’s Crisis.)

Best of all—and rare in the Theater District this season, with its 1920s revivals and 1980s revivals and updates to 1945—it still speaks to life in this city today, remains an honest and wistful look at being a New Yorker in your 20s. It’s still hard to find an apartment, and a purpose; there’s still a fine, fine line between a lover and a friend; and—as Eugene Jerome would no doubt be thrilled to know—the Internet is still for porn.

editorial@observer.com

The seller is Gloria Hirtz, who's listed in records as a retiree. "Why should I talk to you about my life there? It was just a plain, prosaic life," she told The Observer, and hung up.

Mr. Simon, a monument of American theater and New York comedy, wrote, to name a few, The Odd Couple, The Out-of-Towners, The Prisoner of Second Avenue and Brighton Beach Memoirs. His wife is an actress (see her on Match Game here) who's known for having dated J.D. Salinger.

Mr. Simon has had an apartment in the Ritz Tower since at least the 1970s. In 1999, he reportedly bought a bonus co-op in the building so he could have an office, but then "changed his mind and decided that he prefers to work in Los Angeles," the Daily News said a year later. In 2005, he and his wife spent $1.1 million on another unit.

The Ritz Tower, "built in 1925 as the city's most elegant apartment hotel," its Web site says, offers housekeeping, valet and laundry services. Its room service options, according to this excellent menu, include grilled double lamb chops, steak au poivre with cognac, and peach melba.

mabelson@observer.com

Was Neil Simon’s “screwball comedy” that funny—or that screwball—in the first place? I guess it must have been. It was certainly a big hit with the young Robert Redford and Elizabeth Ashley 43 years ago. But an adequate 1967 film version with Mr. Redford and Jane Fonda I’ve seen some of on TV looks badly dated. The Odd Couple—miscast or not—remains vintage Neil Simon at his best. But it’s difficult to see how the original Barefoot in the Park has become such a classic in the intervening 43 years that it merits a major Broadway revival.

My 90-year-old aunt in England doesn’t think it’s worth reviving. I wouldn’t introduce her, but Aunt Marie knows a thing or two. Whenever we talk by phone, she always says to me, “Seen any good theater lately—dare I ask?”

When I said I was about to see Barefoot in the Park, she sounded very surprised. “Why on earth would they revive it?” she asked. “It’s so old-fashioned.”

Now, if my English aunt at 90 years of age knows it’s old-fashioned, what do the seven big-shot producers of Barefoot in the Park know that she doesn’t know? What do they know, and when did they know it? What does Scott Elliott know? And what does the show’s stylish costume designer Isaac Mizrahi know?

Mr. Mizrahi, it so happens, knows a lot and I won’t hear a word against him, unless it’s from me. I have thought highly of the boy ever since I heard him sing “A Cup of Coffee, A Sandwich And You” while creating a frock on a sewing machine during his own one-man show. Mr. Mizrahi designed the costumes for Mr. Elliott’s revival of The Women in 2001, and the curtain call of the entire cast wearing vintage 1930’s underwear was the high point. If Mr. Mizrahi has a flaw in his costume designs for the theater, however, it is that he’s incapable of creating anything remotely drab.

For example, the young heroine’s dreaded mother (played by Jill Clayburgh) in Barefoot in the Park is described in the script as someone who “has not bothered to look after herself these past few years. She could use a permanent and a whole new wardrobe.”

A permanent? Neil Simon means a perm, we assume. A perm? But a woman who needs a whole new wardrobe ought not to enter looking more stylish than her own daughter. The glamorous and even chic Ms. Clayburgh is meant to look like a frump. You can take 1960’s nostalgia too far—much too far. Mr. Mizrahi will be designing the costumes for Mr. Elliott’s new production of The Threepenny Opera in April. Memo to them both: Brecht has never been performed chic.

But the look of the Barefoot in the Park production, with its retro-60’s set design and fifth-floor walk-up by Derek McLane, isn’t to blame for what’s gone wrong. Nor the inexperienced leads. Nor even its sound—Petula Clark singing “Downtown,” which gives the impression that the action is all happening in the wild and wacky Village. (It’s actually taking place in the nondescript East 40’s off Third, but no matter.) The creaky script itself simply doesn’t hold up. A million TV sitcoms since Mr. Simon wrote Barefoot in the Park in 1963 have made it unsavably dated.

A while ago, I was on a panel discussion about the Broadway season with Mr. Elliott, the founder of the New Group. He explained that it was time to revive Barefoot in the Park and look at it again. He presented an enthusiastic case for it having meaningful things to say to us today about the flush of love and the reality of marriage. But I couldn’t help but fear that the director, whose specialty is social realism (the British plays of Mike Leigh; the recent fine revival of Hurlyburly), was talking about a minor Neil Simon comedy as if it were a neglected Ibsen.

Underneath Mr. Simon’s typical froth is Mr. Simon’s typical froth. Or as the lady said, “There is no there there.” Corie Bratter (Amanda Peet) is the newly married wifey. She’s the kind of madcap, spontaneous spirit who loves to walk barefoot in the park in the middle of winter. As I write this, it’s so freezing cold outside that everybody’s at home in bed. It wouldn’t bother Corie! She’d be outside walking barefoot in the park! And you know why? Because she’s adorable.

Corie Bratter is not for me. But Irene Bullock is. As long as Carole Lombard plays Irene Bullock in the 1936 My Man Godfrey, she’s irresistibly for me. I was glad to see the enduring screwball film classic again after seeing Barefoot in the Park. It reminds us of the possibilities. On the other hand, repressed Paul (Patrick Wilson) is Corie’s young husband. He’s a conventional lawyer, a stuffed shirt in a business suit who’s middle-aged about 25 years before his time. What did Corie ever see in him? And vice versa. Well, he’s handsome, she’s pretty. And Mr. Simon has thus written an expertly programmed sitcom in two acts about the comic “horrors” of marriage once the honeymoon is over, with “zany” subplot.

There’s also Corie’s well-meaning old mum (Ms. Clayburgh)—a familiar comic stereotype of the interfering mother-in-law who’s meant to be “lovable.” Is she Jewish? (As one of my colleagues explained, “Yes and no.”) There’s an aging lothario, Victor Velasco (played by Tony Roberts in a beret), who will surely pursue secretly willing widowed Mum (who will pretend to be shocked). Victor is some kind of broke artist or unemployed chef. He’s the original wild and crazy guy who cooks exotic stuff like kimchi and eats really strange foreign food in Queens (both sources of much hilarity).

All the neighbors in the building are “crazy” like Victor. “Do you know we have some of the greatest weirdos in the country right here, in this house?” says Paul.

“Really,” says Corie. “Like who?”

“Well ... Mr. and Mrs. Bosco.”

“Who are they?”

“Mr. and Mrs. Bosco are a lovely young couple who just happen to be of the same sex and no one knows which one that is.”

Only in New York, folks. But Paul names other tenants with “peculiar” names—foreign sort of names. “In Apartment 3C live Mr. and Mrs. Gonzales.”

“So?” says Corie.

“I’m not through. Mr. and Mrs. Gonzales, Mr. and Mrs. Armanariz, and Mr. Calhoun ... who must be the umpire.”

What’s the joke? But Mr. Simon is on a roll. “No one knows who lives in Apartment 4D,” Paul continues. “No one has come in or gone out in three years except every morning there are nine empty cans of tuna fish outside the door …. ”

“No kidding,” says Corie, the comic feed. “Who do you think lives there?”

“Well, it sounds like a big cat with a can opener.”

It’s pretty tame, isn’t it? Yet fans of Neil Simon insist that he’s a comic master who never descended to the level of gags and one-liners. And to that I say: Tell it to the big cat with the can opener.

Barefoot in the Park was Mr. Simon’s first hit, and the chemistry of the theater ingénue named Robert Redford—“my golden goy,” as Barbra Streisand described him—and the always attractive Elizabeth Ashley is said to have made it appealing. But Patrick Wilson—who’s been so successful in musicals—blandly lacks a certain sexual magnetism, and, alas, Amanda Peet is trying much too hard. Tony Roberts and Jill Clayburgh are troupers, to say the least. Adam Sietz plays the nameless Telephone Repairman who’s wise about marriage. He says that marriages keep breaking down now and then, like telephones. But they have a way of getting fixed.

Those were the days!

Was Neil Simon’s “screwball comedy” that funny—or that screwball—in the first place? I guess it must have been. It was certainly a big hit with the young Robert Redford and Elizabeth Ashley 43 years ago. But an adequate 1967 film version with Mr. Redford and Jane Fonda I’ve seen some of on TV looks badly dated. The Odd Couple—miscast or not—remains vintage Neil Simon at his best. But it’s difficult to see how the original Barefoot in the Park has become such a classic in the intervening 43 years that it merits a major Broadway revival.

My 90-year-old aunt in England doesn’t think it’s worth reviving. I wouldn’t introduce her, but Aunt Marie knows a thing or two. Whenever we talk by phone, she always says to me, “Seen any good theater lately—dare I ask?”

When I said I was about to see Barefoot in the Park, she sounded very surprised. “Why on earth would they revive it?” she asked. “It’s so old-fashioned.”

Now, if my English aunt at 90 years of age knows it’s old-fashioned, what do the seven big-shot producers of Barefoot in the Park know that she doesn’t know? What do they know, and when did they know it? What does Scott Elliott know? And what does the show’s stylish costume designer Isaac Mizrahi know?

Mr. Mizrahi, it so happens, knows a lot and I won’t hear a word against him, unless it’s from me. I have thought highly of the boy ever since I heard him sing “A Cup of Coffee, A Sandwich And You” while creating a frock on a sewing machine during his own one-man show. Mr. Mizrahi designed the costumes for Mr. Elliott’s revival of The Women in 2001, and the curtain call of the entire cast wearing vintage 1930’s underwear was the high point. If Mr. Mizrahi has a flaw in his costume designs for the theater, however, it is that he’s incapable of creating anything remotely drab.

For example, the young heroine’s dreaded mother (played by Jill Clayburgh) in Barefoot in the Park is described in the script as someone who “has not bothered to look after herself these past few years. She could use a permanent and a whole new wardrobe.”

A permanent? Neil Simon means a perm, we assume. A perm? But a woman who needs a whole new wardrobe ought not to enter looking more stylish than her own daughter. The glamorous and even chic Ms. Clayburgh is meant to look like a frump. You can take 1960’s nostalgia too far— much too far. Mr. Mizrahi will be designing the costumes for Mr. Elliott’s new production of The Threepenny Opera in April. Memo to them both: Brecht has never been performed chic.

But the look of the Barefoot in the Park production, with its retro-60’s set design and fifth-floor walk-up by Derek McLane, isn’t to blame for what’s gone wrong. Nor the inexperienced leads. Nor even its sound—Petula Clark singing “Downtown,” which gives the impression that the action is all happening in the wild and wacky Village. (It’s actually taking place in the nondescript East 40’s off Third, but no matter.) The creaky script itself simply doesn’t hold up. A million TV sitcoms since Mr. Simon wrote Barefoot in the Park in 1963 have made it unsavably dated.

A while ago, I was on a panel discussion about the Broadway season with Mr. Elliott, the founder of the New Group. He explained that it was time to revive Barefoot in the Park and look at it again. He presented an enthusiastic case for it having meaningful things to say to us today about the flush of love and the reality of marriage. But I couldn’t help but fear that the director, whose specialty is social realism (the British plays of Mike Leigh; the recent fine revival of Hurlyburly), was talking about a minor Neil Simon comedy as if it were a neglected Ibsen.

Underneath Mr. Simon’s typical froth is Mr. Simon’s typical froth. Or as the lady said, “There is no there there.” Corie Bratter (Amanda Peet) is the newly married wifey. She’s the kind of madcap, spontaneous spirit who loves to walk barefoot in the park in the middle of winter. As I write this, it’s so freezing cold outside that everybody’s at home in bed. It wouldn’t bother Corie! She’d be outside walking barefoot in the park! And you know why? Because she’s adorable.

Corie Bratter is not for me. But Irene Bullock is. As long as Carole Lombard plays Irene Bullock in the 1936 My Man Godfrey, she’s irresistibly for me. I was glad to see the enduring screwball film classic again after seeing Barefoot in the Park. It reminds us of the possibilities. On the other hand, repressed Paul (Patrick Wilson) is Corie’s young husband. He’s a conventional lawyer, a stuffed shirt in a business suit who’s middle-aged about 25 years before his time. What did Corie ever see in him? And vice versa. Well, he’s handsome, she’s pretty. And Mr. Simon has thus written an expertly programmed sitcom in two acts about the comic “horrors” of marriage once the honeymoon is over, with “zany” subplot.

There’s also Corie’s well-meaning old mum (Ms. Clayburgh)—a familiar comic stereotype of the interfering mother-in-law who’s meant to be “lovable.” Is she Jewish? (As one of my colleagues explained, “Yes and no.”) There’s an aging lothario, Victor Velasco (played by Tony Roberts in a beret), who will surely pursue secretly willing widowed Mum (who will pretend to be shocked). Victor is some kind of broke artist or unemployed chef. He’s the original wild and crazy guy who cooks exotic stuff like kimchi and eats really strange foreign food in Queens (both sources of much hilarity).

All the neighbors in the building are “crazy” like Victor. “Do you know we have some of the greatest weirdos in the country right here, in this house?” says Paul.

“Really,” says Corie. “Like who?”

“Well ... Mr. and Mrs. Bosco.”

“Who are they?”

“Mr. and Mrs. Bosco are a lovely young couple who just happen to be of the same sex and no one knows which one that is.”

Only in New York, folks. But Paul names other tenants with “peculiar” names—foreign sort of names. “In Apartment 3C live Mr. and Mrs. Gonzales.”

“So?” says Corie.

“I’m not through. Mr. and Mrs. Gonzales, Mr. and Mrs. Armanariz, and Mr. Calhoun ... who must be the umpire.”

What’s the joke? But Mr. Simon is on a roll. “No one knows who lives in Apartment 4D,” Paul continues. “No one has come in or gone out in three years except every morning there are nine empty cans of tuna fish outside the door …. ”

“No kidding,” says Corie, the comic feed. “Who do you think lives there?”

“Well, it sounds like a big cat with a can opener.”

It’s pretty tame, isn’t it? Yet fans of Neil Simon insist that he’s a comic master who never descended to the level of gags and one-liners. And to that I say: Tell it to the big cat with the can opener.

Barefoot in the Park was Mr. Simon’s first hit, and the chemistry of the theater ingénue named Robert Redford—“my golden goy,” as Barbra Streisand described him—and the always attractive Elizabeth Ashley is said to have made it appealing. But Patrick Wilson—who’s been so successful in musicals—blandly lacks a certain sexual magnetism, and, alas, Amanda Peet is trying much too hard. Tony Roberts and Jill Clayburgh are troupers, to say the least. Adam Sietz plays the nameless Telephone Repairman who’s wise about marriage. He says that marriages keep breaking down now and then, like telephones. But they have a way of getting fixed.

Those were the days!

"Characters in a play? I'm not quite sure I-"

"Come on, Bill. Be a sport. You know how play dialogue can seem sorta forced-but sorta natural at the same time? Like when we saw Burn This that time. The revival at that place over by Union Square. It would be like that. We'd be talking to each other like that."

" Burn This was sorta good but it sorta stunk."

"Or we could act like they were in that other thing we saw …. "

"The Ovid thing that was supposed to be so amazing? With the nudity? It was supposed to heal our 9/11 wounds or something, but it didn't? Is that the one you mean?"

"No, the other."

"The Shakespeare in the Park thing? With the guy from L.A. Law?"

"No, silly, I mean the-can't think of it right now. Anyway, doesn't matter. Thing is, I just thought it would be a hoot if we-"

"Hang on. A 'hoot'? Is this you talking, or are you already doing the character-in-a-play thing?"

"I … I don't know, Bill. Don't laugh! At me! Seriously. It may sound stupid, but I don't know if I really use the word 'hoot' or not. I just can't tell. I swear. I swear to you."

"Come on, Stace, this isn't something to get upset about."

"Upset? I'm not upset."

"What are you, then?"

"I'm disconcerted."

"What is this, Neil Simon now?"

"It's disconcerting, not knowing if you really use the word 'hoot.' Not knowing your own vocabulary. Can you understand that, Bill? Can you?"

"Maybe I can … or maybe I just don't give a hoot."

"Oh, you're a riot, Bill! A real riot. Or should I say, 'You're a hoot'? Seriously, though, it's not a very good feeling."

"Sorry, but I'm havin' a little trouble joinin' you in this specific pity party."

"Oh, I forgot. Forgot I was talking to Mr. I'm-So-Sure-of-Myself. Forgot I was talking to Mr. Oh-She-Wants-to-Pretend-We're-Characters-in-a-Play-But-I'll-Be-All-Cool-While-She-Makes-a-Fool-of-Herself-and-I'll-Just-Criticize-Everything-She-Says. So typical, Bill. It's just so effing typical of you, to hang back and criticize. To make remarks."

"Remarks?"

"Remarks!"

"Stace-I wasn't-I thought this whole thing was just-"

"Just what, Bill? Just what?"

"You want to know what I think? What I actually, seriously think? Why are you drinking from an empty coffee cup?"

"More sugar, please."

"What I think is, you're just talking like this to get some kind of reaction out of me. To push my buttons. Well, push away, baby. Actually, Stace-and I'm being dead serious now-actually, I don't know what it is you're doing. Sometimes I feel I don't even know you. Not really. Not in any real way."

"You know me. Come on, Bill. Don't say that! Please. You know me. If you don't know me … after everything we've … then I might as well just …. hate it when you say that. Just hate it."

"You hate it when I say something I've never even said before? Because I've never said I don't know you. Not once. Are we in some crazy land?"

"You've said it before. Maybe not in so many words, Bill. But you've said it. And, yeah, it hurts. For your information it hurts pretty fucking bad, Bill. Oh, by the way, excuse me for engaging in what you would call psychobabble, but what I would call stating my feelings the best way I know how. So, yeah, it hurts me, Bill, when you say that. Like you're going for my weakness. Like a knife, Bill. Like a knife."

"Bravo, Stace. Very nice. Now let's please-can we please get back to normal now?"

"You think this isn't real? Is that what you think? This is very real, Bill. It's all too real. I wish it weren't. I wish these walls were scrims. I do, Bill, I do. And I wish this weren't some crappy Manhattan apartment that's one room too small but a stage set-with floorboards, and lights, and a real live audience coughing and crinkling their Playbills at our feet. But no. No, Bill. No. 'Fraid this is … life. It's life, m'friend. Life."

"I just-Stace, come on. I think that we've reached-"

"Say it. Let me hear you talk for a change. Your true thoughts."

"I don't know-but maybe … maybe this is a sign or something."

"Sign of what?"

"I don't know. Just a sign."

"Nothing can be 'just a sign.' It has to be a sign of something. You know that, Bill. And I know you know that."

"Maybe it's a sign we don't go together. Maybe I've been forcing it, and you have, too."

"Do you-Bill-do you really think that? Is that what you-"

"I don't know, Stace. I don't always know my own mind. I may seem like I do, but, truly, I'm not like you say I am. Not really. I'm not sure of myself at all. I say one thing, and two minutes later it's the opposite."

"That's good, Bill. So good. We can stop now. We can stop this play-acting."

"So we were just pretending? But I thought-"

"And you did it just right. You were fine, Bill. And it was fun, wasn't it?"

"Fun little game, Stace. You know, they have places for people like you. They're called insane asylums."

"Sounds delightful, darling. When can I go?"

"Not quite yet. I've never made it with a crazy broad before."

"This is something you'd like to try, this 'making it with a crazy broad?'"

"Seriously, Stace, I'm getting a little freaked now. Can we stop? That is, if we're actually still doing the play thing?"

"Stop? Oh, Bill. Can't you see? It's going to be like this from now on. And it's going to be very dramatic and very exciting. I'm going to use your name a lot, and you'll love me, and I'll love you, too, and we won't give a damn about any of it! Now let's go out to a play. I'll wear too much lipstick and you, Bill-sweet, silly, confused Bill-you can be your grumpy old self, in your khakis and your dumb ol' Mets cap."

"Why are you putting your finger to my lips?"

"Hush. Go out to the curb, dear, and hail a cab. The van kind would be best. And I'll be with you in a moment."

The BYOB Note

Attention people of New York City: Please stop writing "BYOB" or "bring something you'd like to drink" in party invitations. It's needless and sounds a little pathetic. We're all adults. If we think we should bring something, we'll bring something. Besides, don't be such a cheapskate. You can get a really nice case of wine for less than $150. You're having the party. Not us. Thank you.

Back in July, Nashville lawyer Larry Woods–who, with his wife, owns Book Man, the largest used bookstore in Tennessee–got an odd message that novelist Jay McInerney had called and wanted to sell a few books. Mr. Woods made an appointment to visit Mr. McInerney at his home in Franklin, Tenn., where he then lived. (Though Mr. McInerney explained that the family was moving to Nashville and didn't want to haul the books, the New York Post had reported on May 16 that after eight years of marriage, he and his wife Helen Bransford were separating.)

Mr. McInerney, it turned out, was liquidating. Said Mr. Woods, "We get down there and he wants to sell every book in the house and every book in the barn where he works." Mr. Woods said that Mr. McInerney, who did not return a call from The Transom, pulled about a few dozen books from the shelves and offered to part with the rest–about 3,000 tomes, including books with the author's name written on the fly leaf that appeared to be from his high school reading list, a nearly complete set of the 1920's juvenile series The Rover Boys , some crappy paperbacks, every major American novel of the last 30 years and hundreds of copies of his own books.

Mr. McInerney–who will be in New York Nov. 9 to celebrate the publication of Bacchus & Me , his new book on the pleasures of wine–can sleep well knowing that his reputation remains intact in Tennessee. "We paid dearly for them, but he's a major American literary figure," Mr. Woods said. "We were pleased to be able to pay dearly for them." (After all, who wouldn't run down his own grandmother for 100 copies of Model Behavior ?)

According to Mr. Woods, the writer's taste didn't meander too far from the mainstream. "There was absolutely no pornography, no channeling New Age kind of stuff," he said. "Nothing that jumped out and said, 'Gee, why would an intelligent writer have something like that?'"

Priestley's Piece of the Lock

On Oct. 19, Jason Priestley was at Eugene, a supper club on West 24th Street, to celebrate the premiere of Beverly Hills 90210 creator Darren Starr's new Fox show, The Street . In his heyday, Mr. Priestley played the floppy-haired Brandon Walsh on 90210. Lately, he's done things like narrate a National Rifle Association gun-safety cartoon starring a character named Eddie Eagle. What with Michael Ovitz milling about and the evening's Wall Street theme, The Transom thought it might be a good opportunity to talk business with Mr. Priestley.

Not long ago, The Transom heard that Mr. Priestley had attached his name to a product. Word was that Mr. Priestley, who is roughly Dustin Hoffman's size, had thrown himself into the rough and tumble world of … plastics. George Foreman has that fat-draining pan, Suzanne Somers has her Thighmaster, and Jason Priestley?

"I've got the Lock & Surface Saver," he said, looking only a little embarrassed. "It's true." As if by reflex, he rattled off the Web address, www.padlockcover.com. Mr. Priestley described the product as a pleasantly colored piece of polyurethane that fits over the body of a Master Lock and prevents it from chipping surfaces. They're sold online and at Ace Hardware for $1.29 each. Apparently, people buy them.

It all started a few years ago, Mr. Priestley explained, after his friend, retired stuntman Lance Turner, told him about the item that he had invented in a moment of almost divine inspiration. "His mother had just passed away, and one night he just sat up in bed and he was like, 'Oh my God.' For some reason, the idea for this product came into his head." Mr. Priestley noted that the invention was especially odd since Mr. Turner had never been a regular user of padlocks. "But it seemed to make a ton of sense to me," the actor said. "I mean, how many Master Locks do they sell around the world every year?"

Not many, The Transom ventured.

"Hundreds of millions of 'em!" Mr. Priestley said, throwing his arms in the air. "Hundreds of millions!"

So Mr. Priestley promised to endorse the Lock & Surface Saver in exchange for a small equity portion of the company … called LanTurn Productions.

Who gives a rat's ass about lock-chipped paint? The Transom asked.

Mr. Priestley swung into salesman mode. "Who cares?" he asked rhetorically. "Well, like, the military cares. Or, like, school districts. We have a lot of school districts around the country who've ordered the lock cover from us so that they don't have to repaint the lockers every year, because they don't get chipped anymore."

The Transom said we still didn't get it.

"It's really much more for industrial use than personal use, you know what I mean?" he said. "Trucking companies buy them to put on all the locks on all trucks. You ever see the semis driving down the street and the paint's all chipped off from where the lock clicks? With the Lock & Surface Saver, it doesn't happen."

Oh, said The Transom. But at $1.29, you would have to sell, like, two million of them to make a million dollars.

Mr. Priestley looked friendly, but exasperated. "But what's the overhead ?" he asked. "It's not like we have a store on Madison Avenue."

Getting the 411 on Woody

When Diane Gottlieb called directory assistance and found that there was an Alvy Singer listed in Manhattan, she thought she'd unearthed New York's best-kept secret: that Woody Allen might actually list his home number under the name of his Annie Hall alter ego. And it just so happened that Ms. Gottlieb, a 64-year-old guidance counselor on sabbatical from her job at the New York City Board of Education, was taking a class called "Film and New York City History" at La Guardia Community College. So when Ms. Gottlieb found out that she had to give a presentation on the film clip of her choice in class, she gave old Alvy– wink, wink –Singer a ring. Who better than the auteur himself to take a little time off from his fall project to explain cinematography to a nice mother of three from Brooklyn?

He wasn't home, so she left a message . "If that's who you are, you're very great, Woody–uh, Alvy ," Ms. Gottlieb said into the machine. "I'm not a crook or a murderer. I'm just a plain lady who is taking a sabbatical and has a wonderful film class."

(As it turns out, the number belonged to Andrew Stengel, the Miramax acquisitions executive and Harvey and Bob Weinstein's de facto political director. Rather than pay the fee to unlist his number, Mr. Stengel listed himself under the name of a character from his favorite movie.)

"I have to talk about lighting, direction and angles," Ms. Gottlieb explained of her class, set to take place on Nov. 2. "I guess I'm not too swift on that part."

Ms. Gottlieb didn't sound too surprised when The Transom told her that she'd struck out on her Woody hunt. "Well," she sighed, "I tried."

It turns out that Ms. Gottlieb is something of a serial 411 user. Before she discovered Alvy Singer, Ms. Gottlieb called information to get a number for Neil Simon, even though he's not technically a film director. She left her name on Private Reach, the service that allows callers to leave a message for those with unlisted numbers. Not long after, Mr. Simon called back, an experience that seemed to have scarred Ms. Gottlieb in some small way.

"He wasn't very nice," said Ms. Gottlieb, who told The Transom all about her three grown children (doctor, lawyer, social worker), her husband's dialysis and her desire to lose 50 pounds. "My son says you can't blame [Neil Simon]. But he did say he thought he was being nice by calling me back. I was so thrilled. I kept saying, 'The Neil Simon?' He wasn't a happy camper."

Mr. Stengel was indifferent to getting the long, misdirected message from Ms. Gottlieb, though he did say that he's decided to change his listing to another pseudonym. If he tries Danny Rose, Ms. Gottlieb's sure to find him.

Beauty and the B-Side

French writer-director Tonie Marshall was standing before a grand window at the French Consulate on Fifth Avenue. In her right hand, she had a flute of champagne. In her bright blue left eye, she had a stray bit of fluff from her pink mohair sweater. Ms. Marshall had come, along with two movie stars and a fleet of stodgy admirers, to fête the Oct. 27 New York release of her most recent feature, Venus Beauty Institute . As soon as she had rid herself of the annoyance and slid her hand mirror back into her purse, Ms. Marshall turned to tell The Transom about the inspiration for the setting of the film she wrote for French screen sensation Nathalie Baye.

"One night I was driving not far from my home, and I pass in front of a beauty parlor," she began from behind a pleasant little cloud of J'Adore perfume. "It was at night and the light was all pink, and there was a very young beautician, very lazy, fixing everything before they close the shop, and she was, like, dancing without music, and it was really an image of a movie. And I said, 'I must shoot that!' And then I went to that beauty parlor, just to see what it was like, because I'm not used to those kind of place." The Transom was intrigued to hear that Ms. Marshall–handsome and well-groomed at 48–was not intimately acquainted with the beauty industry beyond her research forays. "You don't go to beauty parlors yourself?" The Transom inquired. "No!" she replied, and then lowered her voice, "Now I go … not often."

If there was ever any illusion that what goes on behind closed doors at the local beauty parlor is all fun and games–soothing seaweed wraps and whatnot–the movie sets the record straight. At one point, Mme. Nadine, the matron of the Vénus Beauté Institut (played by Bulle Ogier), recounts to her employees an anecdote about a woman who gets down on her hands and knees in order to have her anus waxed and then starts "leaking all over."

"The story about the epilation, the hair removal of the anus, is also true," a wide-eyed Audrey Tautou told The Transom with the help of a translator. The Transom was somewhat taken aback to hear this delicate ingénue, who plays a naïve young salon employee who falls for a geriatric client, breezily utter the A-word through her tastefully rouged lips; and again when the more matronly Ms. Marshall confirmed the tale of woe. "Yes. Yes. True!" she said, gesturing to emphasize the veracity of the story. "I couldn't invent that! You know? For the … the … the anus … it's the owner of the place who told me the story. When she was a young beautician she did that!"

Mon dieu ! But the conversation did not deteriorate further. Instead, convivial banter bounced off the polished floors and trompe l'oeil walls, and white-gloved waiters passed around foie gras and savory tarts on silver trays. It was going on 9 o'clock. The party and its stars–no doubt grateful that their beautician careers had never progressed beyond a dramatized massage or two–made their way into the heavy-draped ballroom to delve into a civilized French repast.

– Beth Broome

My love for Rocco will doubtless surprise some people, including Rocco himself. He is, after all, the president of Jujamcyn Theaters, whom I once challenged to sit in one of his own awesomely cramped Broadway houses and swear to the theatergoing world that there was enough legroom for even a severely depressed dwarf. He did not rise to the challenge. Not only is our Rocco well over six feet tall on a good day, he would have had to sit through his own production of The Sound of Music one more time. He's no fool! To the contrary, this leading commercial producer (and former professor at the Yale School of Drama) turns out to be trouble with a capital T, which rhymes with "we"-and we are delighted.

In a stunning attack on nonprofit theaters-stunning because it came from so unexpected a source-he accused the nonprofit movement of selling out by modeling itself on-of all low things-the commercial theater! Now that must surely be a first. In effect, a Broadway producer is saying to the nonprofit opposition: Don't be like us. Writing in the June 4 Arts & Leisure Section of The New York Times , Rocco took particularly lethal aim at the Roundabout Theatre's artistic director, Todd Haimes, for playing it safe with star-driven, mediocre subscription fare and for selling the name and dignity of his theater to American Airlines for a few more pieces of silver.

"It would, I suppose, be hyperbolic to say that Todd Haimes has had a more pernicious influence on English-speaking theater than anyone since Oliver Cromwell (and it wouldn't be nice, either, since Mr. Haimes is a personable and honorable man)," Rocco wrote in his best I-come-not-to-bury-Caesar style. "But it can be reasonably argued that the forces of the marketplace through the years have been just as effective a censor as government edicts."

He was boldly arguing that subsidized theaters like the Roundabout have lost their way by pandering to sleepy subscribers and Broadway values, or that they function increasingly in open, unembarrassed alliance with the commercial producers themselves. In other, bitter words: There no longer exists a clear difference between the commercial and the nonprofit, between the bottom line and the artistically independent-and for some of us, the lifeblood of American theater is at stake.

When Lincoln Center jumped into bed with the Broadway producer Garth Drabinsky in 1998 to co-produce an expensive new musical, Parade , my strong objection was that the independence of our nonprofit theaters ought to be sacrosanct. What do we see all around us but more compromise, more and more conformity-a diminishment, if you will, of individualism and freedom of choice. I look to our nonprofit theaters not to compromise more, but less . I look to them as the last stronghold where certain stories may be told in liberty. The enduring strength of nonprofit theater-of the very identity which accounts for its unique contribution and artistic vision-resides in the rejection of Broadway values.

It's argued that without Broadway investors and their "enhancement money," nonprofit theaters like Lincoln Center, the Public Theater and the Manhattan Theatre Club wouldn't be able to produce big musicals. My answer to that is: Then produce small musicals. And let the theaters that are held in public trust remain proudly independent-producing musicals and plays that Broadway daren't risk, which is why they're in business in the first place.

Why, then, do commercial producers make alliances with nonprofit theaters? Not for art's sake, surely. There's only one reason: It's a safer and cheaper way of producing. From New York to Los Angeles to Seattle to San Francisco to San Diego, the nonprofit theaters of America are being used simply as try-out houses for Broadway. A musical version of The Full Monty is currently in production at the nonprofit Old Globe Theatre in San Diego, where it's partly financed by Fox Searchlight, the producers of the 1997 hit movie. The show, once tested in the less pressurized regional marketplace, is heading for Broadway (where it's due to open at one of Rocco's Jujamcyn Theaters!). But the question of whether the Old Globe should function as a try-out house-or whether The Full Monty , the musical, is a particularly thrilling idea-has been lost in the typical commercial opportunism of it all.

Then again, the nonprofit artistic directors argue back with their glib mantra of righteous defensiveness that their artistic integrity is always maintained and that their theaters share in the Broadway profits that help to subsidize their "real" work. They never mention that they also share in the losses and could lose their shirts-thereby jeopardizing everything else they do. Nor is their artistic independence truly maintained, any more than one can become a little bit pregnant. When the Public Theater's recent Wild Party opened on Broadway to a thumbs-down Times review, one of its principal co-producers, Scott Rudin, wanted to close the show immediately. The idea of nurturing a show or an artist through rough times is itself uncommercial.

The "right to fail" is a more typically English concept. That hallowed right-created by the legendary George Devine at the nonprofit powerhouse Royal Court Theatre-is the bedrock of government-subsidized theater in England. "Failing," like not making a profit, is an un-American activity. Yet this country's own subsidized theaters-supported primarily by endowments, corporations and philanthropy-were actually created in the 1960's as a daring alternative to commercial theater. They created their own "right to fail," or the nerve to take uncommercial artistic risks. But today, the line has become so blurred that Gerald Schoenfeld, chairman of the immensely powerful Shubert Organization on Broadway, can claim that the differences between profit and nonprofit are essentially obsolete. There are differences, even so. When was the last time the Shubert independently produced an unknown dramatist on Broadway? But when the Roundabout produces such hackneyed, sure-fire commercial crap as Neil Simon's Hotel Suite -a collection of one-acts taken from Mr. Simon's well-known Plaza Suite , California Suite and London Suite -we're entitled to ask whether this is the most adventurous work a nonprofit theater can offer us.

Our theaters are compromised enough. The nonprofit theater is nontaxable. If it can't behave, it should pay tax like the commercial theater. If it sleeps with Broadway producers, it should forfeit its special status. Let our compliant nonprofit theaters wake up from their smug, slumbering capitulation and return to their unique raison d'être , which is their fierce artistic independence, their social contract with the community, their belief in the intelligence of all audiences, their faith in new talent and in our theatrical heritage, and their joy in creating lots and lots of trouble.

Suffering through Never Been Kissed and The Out-of-Towners on the same day (or any day) is like eating bad clams–upsetting but not life-threatening, and eventually the pain goes away. Every time I ask "Does anybody know how to make movies anymore?" the answer is usually a fast "No," but I have one friend who recently replied, "I've come to rather like bad movies because bad is all there is." The question is, How bad does it get? In the case of the two alleged, brain-dead comedies I just mentioned, the answer is "intolerable."

In Never Been Kissed , another misfire on the artillery range of mentally challenged teenage flicks, we are asked to believe that Drew Barrymore might pass for a glum, 25-year-old virgin (Mistake No. 1 is the assumption that there actually is such a thing) who works as a copy editor at the Chicago Sun-Times . Bland and overweight, she was the dorkiest creep in high school, and things don't seem to be progressing. By day, her ideas get stolen by other reporters but she never gets an assignment of her own. By night, she needlepoints pillows for her bed and feeds her goldfish.

One day her big break arrives when her dopey boss (Garry Marshall, wildly chewing scenery as though on the verge of an aneurysm) sends her underground to enroll in her old school to get the scoop on teenage life. The gristle in this meatless stew centers on the problems of trying to be 17 again. Trading in her Buick LeSabre for a grungy hot rod, the once-rejected teen gross-out arrives, newly equipped in gaucho pants, marabou feathers and foxy curls, ready for a second chance to be campus jailbait, wearing a hidden camera so everyone at the Sun-Times can witness her every humiliation. Instead of reinventing herself as a popular new classmate, the poor geek attracts the sympathy of her dashing English teacher because she knows the difference between Troilus and Cressida, and learns to say things like "Completely rufus" and "Totally awesome." It's the kind of script that brings out the imbecile in everybody.

Somewhere about here you start wondering why, if she has only been out of high school herself for a few years, none of the faculty members remember her. She certainly hasn't lost any weight since her pitiful flashbacks as the most unpopular girl in school. (On prom night, her date even pelted her with raw eggs.) To further challenge credulity, her doofus brother (David Arquette) enrolls himself in the student body and tells so many lies about her sexual prowess that she suddenly captivates the Barbie dolls, the nerds and even the English teacher (Michael Vartan, a Matthew McConaughey lookalike)–all of whom are unaware she's setting them up for a tell-all story. I can't say much more because I slept through the part where she grapples with her conscience for a byline. When I woke up, the editorial staff of the Sun-Times appeared to have staged a strike, ignoring things like deadlines and applauding their closed-circuit TVs as Ms. Barrymore was elected prom queen, duded up as Rosalind in As You Like It . Oh, yes, my friends, we'll be paying for the surprise success of Shakespeare in Love for the rest of the year.

There isn't one believable minute to be found in this labored bore, and it isn't remotely amusing, either. Ms. Barrymore's glazed charms are ambushed by both a witless script and the kind of amateurish direction that encourages her to behave like a grinning, cooing, bumbling birdbrain. I doubt if there is anyone like her at the Sun-Times who would even be given the responsibility of answering Roger Ebert's phone. But before we cast her in the role of innocent, gullible Hollywood victim, please note the screen credit she assigned herself as "executive producer." Meanwhile, writers Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein, and director Raja Gosnell give the impression that Never Been Kissed has been perpetrated by student hacks who got lucky in film school. They all have a long road ahead before they can qualify as professionals.

Neil Simon Should Sue

My weakness for Goldie Hawn is the only thing that got me through The Out-of-Towners , an unnecessary, hyperventilated remake of the 1970 Neil Simon movie that was never any great shakes to begin with. The second time around is no charm, either. Adorable Goldie and the too-intelligent-to-play-idiots Steve Martin can't compete with Sandy Dennis and Jack Lemmon in the original, but they've worked together long enough to develop their own special brand of chemistry, predictable as it is. So why is this movie so bereft of wit, originality and pleasure? For starters, nobody connected with it seems to believe one word of what is going on. The two stars act like village idiots and for whatever lame thread of credibility Neil Simon once had in mind, the hysterical direction by Sam Weisman serves as a wrecking ball.

Rewriting Neil Simon is a job for fools, but screenwriter Marc Lawrence plunges blindly ahead, eager for the label. As tiresome Midwesterners victimized by every contrived cliché New York has to offer, the misguided stars play characters who don't have the horse sense to get out of the rain. Their plane is rerouted to Boston, their luggage is lost, they miss their train, their rental car piles into a wall of fish crates at the Fulton Fish Market, they get mugged by a con man pretending to be Andrew Lloyd Webber, their credit card has been run up to the max by a daughter who is not at home, a mastiff chases them, they end up in an armed robbery and seek refuge in a group therapy session for sexual dysfunctionals, they're discovered having sex in Central Park by none other than Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. All this before they turn from mere slapstick robots into truly hateful people New Yorkers would love to send back home on the next Greyhound.

There's an amazingly inane bit in which Goldie pretends to be a sleazy hooker to steal the key to a man's hotel room so she can order an elaborate dinner from room service. Mr. Martin lands in jail, gets bombed on his cellmate's LSD and hobbles down the street in an homage to Chaplin. Then they climb out of the hotel windows and dangle from the clock in an homage to Harold Lloyd. By the time they blackmail the hotel manager for being a transvestite (an amusing bit by John Cleese who knows crap when he falls in it and never fails to let us know it), the weary audience has lost all respect and sympathy. Not to mention interest. It's not only dumb, but geographically impossible. One minute they're on Canal Street, the next minute they're in Times Square, and all on foot. At one point, they pass the Metropolitan Museum going the wrong way on a one-way street. But why torture you further? Mr. Simon is probably already on the phone with his attorneys.

The original was silly, but its snafus were rooted in plausibility. When Sandy Dennis whined " Oh, my God! " you wanted to say it with her. This time it's Steve Martin who does all the mewling and kvetching while Goldie–looking too trim, sexy and smart to act like a fruitcake–remains severely hobbled by antics her old producers would have rejected on Laugh-In . They're like Blondie and Dagwood gone berserk in a stupefyingly unfunny movie that is always 10 feet behind them. They've caused jubilation before and I hope they will again, but for The Out-of-Towners Ms. Hawn and Mr. Martin both swallowed a stupid pill. In the end, they decide to stay in town and live here, but what if we don't want them? Its detractors are always accusing New York of being a foreign country. This movie makes a good case for entry visas.

Cook's Tribute to Champion

There's a rumor that the voices of angels are dubbed by Barbara Cook. I'm prepared to believe it. In her flawless new act at the Cafe Carlyle (through May 1), she makes music that can only be described as heavenly. In this spring saunter down memory lane, she is rummaging through a trunk of tunes from Broadway shows associated with the late singer-dancer-actor-choreographer-director Gower Champion. Since she never appeared in any of them, it means learning an entirely new repertoire, but she performs every song superbly, with confectionary arrangements by her longtime pianist Wally Harper.

From a wistfully romantic coupling of "Before the Parade Passes By" and "It Only Takes a Moment" ( Hello, Dolly! ) to a beautifully rendered, sensitively felt "I'm Always Chasing Rainbows" ( Irene ), she honors Mr. Champion's ability to turn an empty stage into a canvas of color, people, movement and life, bringing the songs alive as well as the characters who sang them. Turning perky, she makes daisies grow on "I Got the Sun in the Morning" and then, with her richly textured lyric soprano reduces her listeners to apt pupils with "I Got Lost in His Arms," both inspired by Mr. Champion's heralded Los Angeles production of Annie Get Your Gun with Debbie Reynolds.

Whether she is mining the luxurious vein of Al Dubin-Harry Warren songs from Mr. Champion's final show 42nd Street (he died on opening night, leaving behind a show that ran eight years) or proving that sometimes the most breathtaking songs get lost in obscurity by sailing passionately into Bob Merrill's exquisite "His Face" from Carnival , she leaves her inimitable stamp on everything she sings. Simultaneously warm and generous, before acting and singing the pants off "Look What Happened to Mabel," she toasts the original star of Mack and Mabel with "Bernadette Peters was so damn good she practically owns this song, but what the hell?"

For pure enchantment and God-given talent, there is no other angel like Barbara Cook. Somebody up there likes her. Somebody down here feels the same way.