“It was a pretty place to be,” said playwright Chris Durang, a friend since 1972. He called the apartment comfortable but unpredictable, and especially remembers the well-frequented TV den and the foyer.

“Sometimes the cats would sit on the table with the flowers—it was very picturesque!”

According to city records, the buyers are Dina and George Perry. Mr. Perry, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, is probably not as funny as his predecessor: Where Wasserstein wrote about big-willed women in The Heidi Chronicles or The Sisters Rosensweig, Mr. Perry writes papers for the center-left think tank with titles like The War on Terrorism, the World Oil Market and the U.S. Economy.

Maybe Mr. Perry, who did not return calls made to his office at Brookings, was attracted to the apartment’s less arty features: the chef’s kitchen, the formal dining room and a living room with a wood-burning fireplace.

It isn’t clear when Wasserstein bought the co-op, though the earliest tax records filed with the city go back to 1996. Published reports have said that money from the apartment sale will go to Wasserstein’s young daughter Lucy Jane, who is being raised by her uncle Bruce (C.E.O. of Lazard and owner of New York magazine.)

Mr. Durang often crashed in the apartment’s guest room—including once when he had badly burst a blood vessel in his nose. But that changed when his host’s daughter was born.

“I couldn’t crash with a bloody nose anymore,” he said.

Ms. Wasserstein also wrote nonfiction and one novel, and even a libretto: Her opera The Festival of Regrets debuted in 1999, part of a trilogy called Central Park.

Did Lehman Estate Get Close to $32 M. at 2 East 67th?

Back in 1978, well after the death of her colossal art-collector husband Robert Lehman, Lee Anz Lehman bought herself the ninth floor of 2 East 67th Street.

The queenly apartment will soon change hands after nearly 30 years: According to the Corcoran Web site, where the apartment was listed for $32 million, her estate has now signed a contract to sell the co-op.

Senior vice president Leighton Candler had the listing, which put the “magnificent full-floor apartment overlooking Central Park” at 11 rooms and 6,200 square feet. The other stats stack up nicely: There are five wood-burning fireplaces, six sunlit bedrooms and seven (and a half) bathrooms.

Ms. Candler didn’t return calls to her office, so it isn’t clear who the buyer is, or whether the contract was signed anywhere close to the stratospheric asking price.

But it isn’t likely. According to a broker who has seen the apartment, all of those bathrooms need to be redone, and the kitchen too. And there should be a “total renovation of all the systems,” like wiring and air conditioning.

As recompense, Ms. Lehman’s old apartment has a 484-square-foot dining room, according to the floor plan, as well as a long pantry (plus “butler’s room”) and a long kitchen, and then, naturally, a long “breakfast area.”

Ms. Candler’s listing says that the apartment has retained “all its original Rosario Candela details,” referring to the deified Upper East Side designer’s work from 1928.

What does that mean? Photos show that it’s the kind of apartment that should be looked at but not touched: There’s ancient-looking marble and White House–looking wallpaper and uncomfortable-looking chairs and Frederic Edwin Church–looking landscape paintings.

Ivory Tower Sells Penthouse for $4.625 M.

When anthropologist Arjun Appadurai was lured from Yale to become the New School’s provost and chief academic officer in 2004, the downtown university gave him a top-tier eight-room co-op at 2 Fifth Avenue.

He stepped down last year, and now the New School has sold off the Washington Square Park penthouse for $4,625,000. According to city records, Celeste Cheatham O’Neil—the daughter of Georgia-Pacific paper mogul Owen R. Cheatham—is the buyer. The deed lists her old address as being on “Lost Tree Way” in North Palm Beach.

“It was not the kind of real estate that we need right now,” said New School director of communications Caroline Oyama. Indeed: The place had three bedrooms, including a master suite with a private balcony, plus a park terrace off the sprawling living room.

“The standout thing was the view looking straight to Ground Zero,” said the professor, whose articles include “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy.” “Of course we couldn’t see the excavation and all that, but [we saw] where the Towers of Light were, for example.”

When talking about jumping to the Manhattan apartment (and provost position) from his directorship at Yale’s Center for Cities and Globalization, Mr. Appadurai confirmed that the New School “bought it as part of that arrangement.”

Happily, his provost office was a short Fifth Avenue walk away.

“So they did two things at once: to make it convenient for me, because the job required me to be there often; and the second, to make a good investment in real estate.”

The latter is hard to evaluate, since it isn’t clear from city records how much the university paid for the apartment.

Despite its concierge co-op services, the building’s façade is grubby compared to its neighbors. “It is not a prepossessing building from the outside,” said Mr. Appadurai. And yet: “By the time you’re up at the penthouse level, it’s hard to beat! And the view would always change by the hour of the day and the season. The light—it was quite magical.”

He’ll remain at the New School as a distinguished social-sciences professor. Maybe if he saves up, he’ll have a magical penthouse again.

Cerf’s Up! Bennett’s Widow’s Estate Sells for $9.9 Million

Few Upper East Siders have lives or fêtes or surnames like the late Phyllis Cerf Wagner had. Even fewer possess a home like her five-floor townhouse at 132 East 62nd, which went on the market last week for $9.9 million.

“For the second half of the 20th century, probably more important people were in that house than any other private residence that I can think of,” said broker Edward Lee Cave, whose firm is listing the townhouse.

Ms. Cerf Wagner married Random House co-founder Bennett Cerf in 1940 (six years after he brought James Joyce’s Ulysses to America). When Cerf died in 1971, according to public records, the couple’s seven-bedroom house was transferred into his widow’s name.

And four years later, when she married former Mayor Robert Wagner, her house was so magnetic that the statesman moved in.

“It’s all about the most extraordinary people in New York, the people that contributed most. Writers! Cultural people! Politicians! And they couldn’t have been in a more pleasant atmosphere,” Mr. Cave said about the East 62nd Street house. “I mean, the drawing room in the back, you could have given a little dance in there. And to have people in a friendly but very correct environment must have been very conducive.”

Mrs. Cerf Wagner reportedly threw first-rate parties, hosting Capote and Sinatra and Faulkner. (On the other hand, she was prouder of having published Dr. Seuss’ Green Eggs and Ham and others through her Beginner Books imprint.)

Upstairs, her full-floor master suite had a bedroom and study, both with wood-burning fireplaces. Joyce and Seuss by firelight? “Magical! No, not magical—that’s such a dumb word for this house,” said Mr. Cave. “It’s a historical house—in the nicest sense.”

Despite an undistinguished façade, Denning & Fourcade did the décor. “It’s cozy and grand at the same time,” said listing broker John Glass at Cave, “but not elaborately fussy.”

Later, he said the house “has been lovingly cared for over the years”—which means it won’t need the gut renovation that often comes with estate sales. (Ms. Cerf Wagner died in November, at age 90.)

Are her old mirrored dining-room ceiling and big elevator and dumbwaiter common for the neighborhood? “Nope,” said Mr. Glass. “That’s what I mean when I say they really designed it for comfortable living.”

Mayor Bloomberg’s State of the City address won praise from leading Democrats as well as Republicans, and with good reason. It outlined an ambitious agenda grounded in everyday reality, not in divisive ideology. Rather than rest on his achievements, the Mayor is pressing forward to new challenges.

As he begins his second, and last, term, Mr. Bloomberg identified affordable housing as one of his chief concerns for the next four years. He said that his first-term housing program, which built or rehabilitated almost 50,000 units of affordable housing, was “only the beginning.” His new budget will fund a $7.8 billion plan to build or rehab 165,000 affordable-housing units in the coming years. Some of those homes will go up in neighborhoods like the South Bronx—places so many people wrote off as doomed a generation ago.

The Mayor’s plan recognizes that New York will continue to flourish only if the middle class can afford to stay here—or move here. Housing costs are an important consideration, but not the only one. Crime, schools, jobs and general quality of life—these are the bread-and-butter issues that can inspire loyalty, or cause an exodus from the city. Sad experience, whether during the 1970’s or the early 1990’s, teaches us that middle-class taxpayers will leave if they feel unsafe, if their children can’t use public schools, or if they simply can’t afford to live here.

Taxes, of course, present another problem of affordability. High taxes will drive out people, too. That’s why the Mayor emphasized the need to take a look at the cost of the health-care and pension packages offered to city workers.

Simply put, New York can no longer afford the kind of benefits it now gives current employees. The city’s labor force can’t be exempt from the larger trends in the American workplace. New employees will have to pay more for their health insurance. The old benefits and pension package also will have to change, with employees asked to contribute more.

Of course, teachers’ union boss Randi Weingarten sees the Mayor’s reform efforts as nothing less than a declaration of war against city workers. But then again, she would say that, wouldn’t she? Her narrow views and parochial interests belong to another era. The city faces a genuine fiscal crisis in the years ahead, partly because of out-of-control benefits. Mr. Bloomberg understands that these hidden costs must be brought under control, or else he will be forced to cut services, raise taxes or do both.

Mayor Bloomberg made it clear that he wants to stabilize the city’s finances and avoid the lurch from crisis to crisis that has often characterized city budget-making. Keeping the city affordable certainly is one way of doing just that.

Revenge: It’s a Guy Thing

Revenge is a dish best served cold, as the saying goes, but for women, it may be a dish best not served at all. A new study using magnetic-resonance imaging shows that while men get a charge from witnessing an act of revenge, women do not. Instead, they feel empathy for the person on the brunt end of the revenge, even when they don’t like that person. To put it in simpler terms, science is starting to prove what has long been assumed to be true: When you get right down to it, women are just nicer than men.

The researchers at University College London conducted experiments in which test subjects were told to play a cooperative game in pairs. But a handful of actors were secretly brought in, and some were told to cheat and behave selfishly. The test subjects then witnessed everyone being subjected to mild electrical shocks. When one of the “nice” players was being shocked, both men and women had an empathic response. But when one of the “selfish” players was receiving the jolt, men’s brains showed high activity in the satisfaction region and none in the empathy center, while women’s brains were still lit up in the empathy area and showed no activity indicating satisfaction.

The study’s authors believe, however, that the male fondness for revenge plays an important role in society, if one agrees that those who transgress the rules of any given society must be called into account and punished in some fashion.

But is it good news that M.R.I. technology is being used to figure out the differences between men and women? Perhaps soon, women will be asking their dates to bring their M.R.I. results to dinner.

Wendy Wasserstein

Perhaps more so than any other New York playwright, the loss this week of Wendy Wasserstein at the all-too-young age of 55 touched the heart of the city. For decades, she enchanted and entertained New Yorkers with her sharp, idea-packed plays, and became a crucial player in the city’s cultural community. To those who knew her personally, she was profoundly generous, courageous, sweet and empathic. In her work, she reinvented the politically driven romantic comedy, with her unique ability to capture the pleasures and pains of being a self-aware woman in the modern world. Her thought-provoking plays offered women, and men, a way to see themselves with humor, dignity and forgiveness.

She didn’t just work here: Wendy Wasserstein was a New Yorker through and through, born in Brooklyn to a textile manufacturer and an amateur dancer. She graduated from Mount Holyoke College, then studied writing at City College and developed her dramatic talents at the Yale University School of Drama. And the plays came spooling off her pen: Her first was Any Woman Can’t, produced Off Broadway in 1973, followed by her first big success, Uncommon Women and Others, in 1977. With The Heidi Chronicles in 1989, she perfectly captured the contradictions of women who were schooled in the feminism of the 1960’s and 1970’s but found themselves driving the kids around in a Volvo in the 1980’s. The play won the Tony Award, the New York Drama Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Her next play, The Sisters Rosensweig, had the largest advance sale for a non-musical in Broadway history. And she continued to be prolific, with solid plays such as An American Daughter, Old Money and Third, which recently completed its New York run. Along the way, she found time to write a best-selling children’s book and to start the Open Doors program, which takes underprivileged public-school students to the theater. She also gave birth to a daughter, Lucy Jane, who will surely grow up hearing the most miraculous tales of her mother’s love and talent.

She was the best kind of New Yorker, a beautiful bundle of seeming contradictions—giddy but pragmatic; kind-hearted but also hard-nosed; politically serious but also mocking the self-serious. At a time when depictions of New York women tend toward the shallow, shrill and shopping-obsessed, we need Wendy Wasserstein’s voice—and her bubbly laugh—more than ever. Fortunately, she left a legacy of deep friendships and brilliant plays in which her warmth, wit and wisdom live on.

“It happened quite often, it was really a part of hezr conversation. It almost took on the character of words,” said Swoosie Kurtz, who became friends with Ms. Wasserstein after starring in the career-making 1977 production of her breakout play, Uncommon Women and Others. “The giggle would just erupt—and it could mean so many things. It could mean that it was covering up some pain …. Or sometimes it could just be her wonderful sense of the absurd, which was highly refined.”

“It was sort of the laugh of a 12-year-old girl. It was life-enhancing,” said her friend Jon Plowman, who produced the British sitcom Absolutely Fabulous and now heads the BBC’s comedy division.

“It was very brave,” Ms. Kurtz said. “It was a very brave giggle.”

On the morning of Monday, Jan. 30, Ms. Wasserstein died of complications from lymphoma at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. She had been sick for some time, friends said, but had largely kept the illness a secret. She was 55.

With Ms. Wasserstein’s death, the New York theater world lost one of the most vivid voices of the baby-boom generation. She began writing in the 1970’s, and from that first, breakout play, she forged an identity as a kind of generational Ouija board, channeling the yearnings, disappointments and ambitions of her particular era of women. Her women aged as she aged, and as her preoccupations matured and shifted, so did theirs.

Along the way, Ms. Wasserstein saw more of these plays go to Broadway than any woman playwright since Lillian Hellman (three, to be exact) and won a theater’s worth of awards, including the Tony and the Pulitzer for The Heidi Chronicles. She also wrote essays and magazine articles, and had just completed her first novel, a pink-covered satire called Elements of Style. In doing so, she chronicled the first and second acts of her generation, and now that she is not here, her friends and fans are wondering who will tell the rest of their story.

“It’s scary to lose a spokesman for our generation,” said the Broadway theater actress Tovah Feldshuh, who first met Ms. Wasserstein through the playwright’s proud and doting mother, Lola, in the mid-1970’s. “She really was one of the cornerstones of our community. She was of our generation, the children of the 50’s and 60’s and 70’s, that postwar boom, the children who never knew the war, but had grandparents, all of whom had accents.”

From early on, this connection had a particular resonance for women—certainly for that cadre of driven, hyper-educated feminists and post-feminists—who saw their lives played out not just in Ms. Wasserstein’s characters, but in her career as well.

“When Wendy was first being produced, there weren’t women writers being produced very often,” said Tim Sanford, the artistic director for Playwrights Horizons, the theater company that first produced her early works. “I think she was a trailblazer that way, she made that a necessity, partly because she proved the accessibility of her voice.”

This accessibility—effortless, disarming, infectious—was as true of the real woman as it was to her characters. “You really got the sense of absolute worship from her fans,” said Ms. Wasserstein’s friend and fellow scribe, Paul Rudnick, who met her during their proto-theater days at Yale (she was a graduate student, he an undergraduate). “They treasured her, and there was that amazing intimacy that very few people in the arts had. They’ve got the sense that their fans own them, and Wendy had that.”

A true actor’s playwright, she was present throughout the staging of her plays, writing and rewriting dialogue as the actors worked their way through the material.

“I had just this one moment that I had a longish speech, and I remember sitting down with her and kind of working through it with her, and she was really so open and smart about it,” said Glenn Close of her days preparing for her role in the uncommon first production of Uncommon Women and Others. “So the process was really very fun and creative.”

“She really knew people very, very well and could just put her finger right on the pulse,” said Ms. Kurtz. “And her ear for dialogue was just so on the money. She had a great instinctive ear for what rang true and what didn’t, and what fell flat and what could really soar.”

Wasserstein’s flair for the language of theater was wound into the double helix of her DNA: Her maternal grandfather, Simon Schliefer, was a Yiddish playwright, and her mother was an occasional dancer with a passion for theater. Her cousin, Leslie Moonves, tried his hand (and voice) at acting before hopping over to the world of television production, where he now roosts as president of CBS.

Ms. Wasserstein was born in Brooklyn on Oct. 18, 1950, the fifth and youngest child of an “eccentric but traditional” Jewish family. Her mother was (and has, rather famously, remained) a classic Yiddishe mamme—as proud of her kids as she was pushy for grandchildren—and her father, Morris, was a textile manufacturer who eventually earned enough money to move the family to the airy reaches of Upper East Side Manhattan. His daughter has said he invented velveteen.

This old-world business sechel was also passed down through the generations. Ms. Wasserstein’s older brother, Bruce, is the mergers-and-acquisitions man who now heads Lazard. And friends said that she herself might easily have followed in the family tradition.

“She always said she applied to both business school and the Yale School of Drama after college, and she would have gone to whichever place accepted her,” said her longtime friend, the Tony-winning Broadway composer William Finn. “And Yale accepted her first.”

At Yale, Wasserstein joined a herd of talented young theater folk—including the actress Meryl Streep, the playwright Christopher Durang and the costume designer William Ivey Long—who would go on to define a generation of actors, designers, dramaturges and writers. For the next three decades, these men and women would be her closest friends, collaborators and, ultimately, her family. She never did marry, but instead carved out a life worthy of her heroine Heidi Holland. At the age of 48, she gave birth to her daughter, Lucy Jane, named for the Beatles’ “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.”

“We did everything together. We were total family,” said Mr. Finn, who met Ms. Wasserstein after a performance of her play Isn’t It Romantic in 1981. “My family, when they came to New York, would always expect to see her. There’s nothing we didn’t do together.

“She gave so much to me,” he said, citing, as just one “small” example, the role she played in introducing him to the Off Broadway version of the play that would ultimately become his latest Tony-winning project, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. “That was just delivered to me on a platter because of her.”

Generosity was a Wasserstein hallmark—as was her sly sense of humor, always delivered in her signature squeaky, girlish voice.

“I was in the hospital, and she used to come in and do hospital routines. Anything she said was funny,” said Mr. Finn.

And Mr. Plowman, who spent years engaged in an over-the-top contest of wits with Wasserstein to see who could take the other on more absurd and outlandish adventures, couldn’t help but laugh as he recalled one of their last outings—inspired by an orange Lambertson Truex tote bag she had been given by Harper’s Bazaar.

“She rang me and said, ‘I’ve got this bag. We’ve got to take this bag to dinner, because I think this bag could take us places we wouldn’t normally go.’ And she kind of made the bag into another person,” he said. “She was kind of like an injection of vitamins or something. Being with her, she just kind of took you up. Whatever she was on, I wanted part of it,” he said.

“You just knew that you were going to have a great time and you did,” said Mr. Rudnick, recalling one particular evening during the 1980’s “chocolate-chip-cookie boom” when Ms. Wasserstein whisked him off to a restaurant owned by the David’s Cookies guru; she treated him to a multi-course meal made entirely from rich, gooey cookies. “Our religious love of chocolate was one of the things that bound us together forever,” he said.

On the day after her death, the lights went dim on Broadway in tribute.

“We are all losing her way too soon,” wrote Christopher Durang, who said he was too devastated to speak on the phone, and so provided a written statement. “I’m reminded of the line in her Heidi Chronicles in which Peter says to Heidi, ‘I want to know you all my life.’ That’s what I wanted too, and indeed expected it. And I’m so, so sad that fate, or whatever, called her away so soon.”

It was the stealth assault of 2003, stealing the march on the noisy parade float of city moguls led by Daily News owner Mort Zuckerman, who had placed an all-over-but-the-shouting bid that most analysts expected to be successful.

Late in the afternoon on Dec. 16, Mr. Zuckerman called Mr. Kravis, the co-founder of Kohlberg, Kravis and Roberts, which controls Primedia. Only the day before, Mr. Zuckerman and his team had all been declared as winners by The New York Times in their bid to take over the 35-year-old magazine that had begun as a weekly supplement to the New York Herald Tribune, then was bought and started as an emblem of a revitalized New York of the 1960s and 1970s by its founding editor, Clay Felker.

Now Mr. Zuckerman, who wanted the magazine, and had joined with an all-star team of New York power-including movie studio head Harvey Weinstein, fast-food mogul Nelson Peltz, advertising legend Donny Deutsch and the increasingly disillusioned matchmaker for the whole mob, media columnist Michael Wolff- learned that Primedia had agreed to sell the magazine to leverage buyout king and Lazard CEO Bruce Wasserstein for $55 million.

When, according to sources familiar with the situation, Mr. Zuckerman offered a higher bid, it was "rebuffed."

A Primedia spokesman declined to comment. Mr. Zuckerman through a spokesman also declined to comment, saying only, "We wish Mr. Wasserstein well."

Thus climaxed one of the more rococo episodes in recent media history, one that New York itself would have delighted in. Since October, when the company first announced the sale of the magazine, it had a barrage of offers, spurring the passion of groups from the Learning Annex to Miramax and Cablevision. Only the Church of Scientology and the Boy Scouts of America seemed to be uninterested, and even that can't really be ascertained.

In more recent days, with the submission of final bids on Dec. 11 one of two candidates seemed poised to win: former Hachette Filipacchi CEO David Pecker's tabloid empire, American Media, owner of the National Star, editorially being reshaped by turnaround diva Bonnie Fuller. And of course, Mr. Zuckerman's giant Al Hirschfeld mural of limited partners that included Bill Clinton cohort Jeffrey Epstein, Arby's czar Mr. Peltz, Miramax co-chairman Mr. Weinstein and ad man Mr. Deutsch.

According to one source familiar with the situation, American Media's bid came in the low-to-mid $40 million range, a bid that matches New York's current annual revenues. The same source said Mr. Zuckerman's bid was around the mid-$40 million area.

"We're very pleased that the sale is complete," said New York's Caroline Miller, the valiant and beleaguered editor in chief who had somehow seen the weekly through the ordeal not only of the sale but of life with Primedia, which never seemed quite sure what to do with it.

"It's been a long, rather dramatic process," she said, "and we're very comfortable we're going to be in great hands. We've met with the Wasserstein people several times. We're delighted. They're very careful. They know what they're buying. They're not just buying the romance of a magazine in 1968. And they're serious about making some investments."

In other words, Ms. Miller and her staff were euphoric. They were thrilled that the magazine was not going to either one group that may have been the strangest team assembled since the X-Men, or another they considered threateningly downmarket. And to an owner who seemed to appreciate the currency of what the current New York staff had done with it, not besotted with the city magazine's past, when it participated in the birth of the New Journalism as well as service journalism.

Ms. Miller said she had met with Mr. Wasserstein twice: the second time coming on Sunday, Dec. 14. Mr. Zuckerman, according to sources, expressed concern about Mr. Wasserstein's bid the evening of Monday, Dec. 15, but remained confident of his group's chances as late as Tuesday morning.

However, the magazine now belongs to Mr. Wasserstein. The brother of playwright Wendy Wasserstein, Mr. Wasserstein, 55, a highly-educated financier who attended the University of Michigan, Harvard Law School, Harvard Business School, Cambridge University, where he was Knox Fellow. He was known in the business press as "Bid 'em up Bruce" for persuading clients to spend high on acquisitions, first did time at First Boston Corp. from 1977 to 1988, before founding the investment banking firm Wasserstein Perella with Joseph Perella. While currently C.E.O. of Lazard, Mr. Wasserstein remains the head of Wasserstein and Co., the private equity fund that controls American Lawyer Media, which publishes the American Lawyer and the National Law Journal.His firm also controls The Daily Deal, and Real Estate Media, which includes a number of real estate trade publications.

"It's a great brand," a spokesman for Mr. Wasserstein said. "They see a great future for it. They've shown a great deal of expertise on other publications dealing with so-called `professional New York.' One of the things they're looking for from New York magazine is to take it upscale and maybe expand business coverage, and, for example more coverage of the fashion industry. They've been involved with the process from very beginning," the spokesman continued. "They took a very low profile as way of operating and it served them well."

But Mr. Wasserstein, still C.E.O. of Lazard-and questions have arisen about the conflicts that his position there as well as the owner of a journalistically aggressive publication will add up to-has paid a lot of money for a magazine that will take a great deal more in reinvestment to restore to a profitable position in the media.

"It's really weird," said one private equity investor who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "I don't understand why he's doing it. This may be an interesting hobby, but it's not an investment. There is some economic value to the magazine. This is a real entity. But in order to justify $55 million, you have to have cash flow north of $5 million annually. At the moment, it's $1 to 2 million."

"I think one of the things that helped the deal is that a rebound is anticipated, certainly next year," said Reed Phillips, managing partner of the media investment firm DeSilva & Phillips. I think that helped push the price on the deal. They wouldn't have got $55 million if there wasn't a rebound in the future. Another tough year would have reflected in the price. I think the price reflects the optimism."

There's optimism, and there's $55 million worth of optimism-a price, sources indicated, that even Mr. Zuckerman and his group weren't willing to reach until late Tuesday, when it no longer mattered. From the beginning, according to multiple sources, Mr. Zuckerman aggressively sought people he knew were dreamy eyed for New York. According to sources, when he learned that Michael Wolff, the magazine's media columnist had lined up Mr. Deutsch and Mr. Epstein as potential investors, Mr. Zuckerman swooped in, convincing them that if they wanted to do this, they should do it with him.

Mr. Wolff declined to comment and Mr. Epstein did not return a call seeking comment. A spokesman said Mr. Deutsch was unavailable for comment. As did a spokesman for Mr. Weinstein, who had been considered well distanced from the magazine business with the wreckage and closure of Talk in early 2002. While the staff of New York was jubilant over Mr. Zuckerman's failure, the media press missed out on the greatest potential limited partnership collision in New York since George Steinbrenner cames to the Bronx.

"I think the consortium was the weakness," said Mr. Felker, the magazine's founding editor. "I mean, the thing is that it's very difficult to have a consortium run a publication, because the editorial process becomes pulled in many directions.

The thing is that a successful magazine must have one voice behind it, and if you have a strong voice like Wasserstein, then the magazine has a chance to work. And some very powerful people have run very tough publications, and they've had all the legal and financial and social entrée and position that anybody can want: Kaye Graham, Henry Luce and Rupert Murdoch. I mean, the power comes from running honest publications with a point of view."

From Off the Record's special correspondent, Michael M. Thomas:

Some three weeks ago, I sent an e-mail to an acquaintance telling him I was thinking about him and rooting for him. It was the most I could do; it-like the prayers and good wishes of all his friends and fans, like the best modern medicine could do-simply wasn't enough. Bob Bartley died last Wednesday, Dec. 10.

Once upon a time, when a gallant and worthy opponent went down, one doffed one's hat and stood aside and paid tribute to a fight well fought, a race well run.

I should like to do so now. In the 15 years I wrote a column for this newspaper, Robert Bartley (and his column in The Wall Street Journal) was the most fun and the most challenging of my targets of choice.

I first met him back in the old days at the Lehrman Institute, in the early Reagan years, when he played the role of Suslov to the new regime's men of the moment, putting bright words in the mouths of idiots, at least one of whom still operates at the very summit of federal influence. Like many persons of strong theoretical conviction, Bob tended to downplay the corrupting human element in the working-out of grand designs in the real world and in real time, and it was there that we had our differences-symbolized by one name: Michael Milken.

But that means nothing now. Bob was smart, he was committed, he was talented, he was influential-largely for the better, I think-and he was honorable and decent. He will be missed enormously, and I can do no better than dip my ensign to him as the last salute is fired.

To his family and colleagues, I extend condolences and sympathy. In the long goodnight, I wish Bob Godspeed.

-Michael M. Thomas

It was the stealth assault of 2003, stealing the march on the noisy parade float of city moguls led by Daily News owner Mort Zuckerman, who had placed an all-over-but-the-shouting bid that most analysts expected to be successful.

Late in the afternoon on Dec. 16, Mr. Zuckerman called Mr. Kravis, the co-founder of Kohlberg, Kravis and Roberts, which controls Primedia. Only the day before, Mr. Zuckerman and his team had all been declared as winners by The New York Times in their bid to take over the 35-year-old magazine that had begun as a weekly supplement to the New York Herald Tribune, then was bought and started as an emblem of a revitalized New York of the 1960s and 1970s by its founding editor, Clay Felker.

Now Mr. Zuckerman, who wanted the magazine, and had joined with an all-star team of New York power-including movie studio head Harvey Weinstein, fast-food mogul Nelson Peltz, advertising legend Donny Deutsch and the increasingly disillusioned matchmaker for the whole mob, media columnist Michael Wolff- learned that Primedia had agreed to sell the magazine to leverage buyout king and Lazard CEO Bruce Wasserstein for $55 million.

When, according to sources familiar with the situation, Mr. Zuckerman offered a higher bid, it was "rebuffed."

A Primedia spokesman declined to comment. Mr. Zuckerman through a spokesman also declined to comment, saying only, "We wish Mr. Wasserstein well."

Thus climaxed one of the more rococo episodes in recent media history, one that New York itself would have delighted in. Since October, when the company first announced the sale of the magazine, it had a barrage of offers, spurring the passion of groups from the Learning Annex to Miramax and Cablevision. Only the Church of Scientology and the Boy Scouts of America seemed to be uninterested, and even that can't really be ascertained.

In more recent days, with the submission of final bids on Dec. 11 one of two candidates seemed poised to win: former Hachette Filipacchi CEO David Pecker's tabloid empire, American Media, owner of the National Star, editorially being reshaped by turnaround diva Bonnie Fuller. And of course, Mr. Zuckerman's giant Al Hirschfeld mural of limited partners that included Bill Clinton cohort Jeffrey Epstein, Arby's czar Mr. Peltz, Miramax co-chairman Mr. Weinstein and ad man Mr. Deutsch.

According to one source familiar with the situation, American Media's bid came in the low-to-mid $40 million range, a bid that matches New York's current annual revenues. The same source said Mr. Zuckerman's bid was around the mid-$40 million area.

"We're very pleased that the sale is complete," said New York's Caroline Miller, the valiant and beleaguered editor in chief who had somehow seen the weekly through the ordeal not only of the sale but of life with Primedia, which never seemed quite sure what to do with it.

"It's been a long, rather dramatic process," she said, "and we're very comfortable we're going to be in great hands. We've met with the Wasserstein people several times. We're delighted. They're very careful. They know what they're buying. They're not just buying the romance of a magazine in 1968. And they're serious about making some investments."

In other words, Ms. Miller and her staff were euphoric. They were thrilled that the magazine was not going to either one group that may have been the strangest team assembled since the X-Men, or another they considered threateningly downmarket. And to an owner who seemed to appreciate the currency of what the current New York staff had done with it, not besotted with the city magazine's past, when it participated in the birth of the New Journalism as well as service journalism.

Ms. Miller said she had met with Mr. Wasserstein twice: the second time coming on Sunday, Dec. 14. Mr. Zuckerman, according to sources, expressed concern about Mr. Wasserstein's bid the evening of Monday, Dec. 15, but remained confident of his group's chances as late as Tuesday morning.

However, the magazine now belongs to Mr. Wasserstein. The brother of playwright Wendy Wasserstein, Mr. Wasserstein, 55, a highly-educated financier who attended the University of Michigan, Harvard Law School, Harvard Business School, Cambridge University, where he was Knox Fellow. He was known in the business press as "Bid 'em up Bruce" for persuading clients to spend high on acquisitions, first did time at First Boston Corp. from 1977 to 1988, before founding the investment banking firm Wasserstein Perella with Joseph Perella. While currently C.E.O. of Lazard, Mr. Wasserstein remains the head of Wasserstein and Co., the private equity fund that controls American Lawyer Media, which publishes the American Lawyer and the National Law Journal.His firm also controls The Daily Deal, and Real Estate Media, which includes a number of real estate trade publications.

"It's a great brand," a spokesman for Mr. Wasserstein said. "They see a great future for it. They've shown a great deal of expertise on other publications dealing with so-called `professional New York.' One of the things they're looking for from New York magazine is to take it upscale and maybe expand business coverage, and, for example more coverage of the fashion industry. They've been involved with the process from very beginning," the spokesman continued. "They took a very low profile as way of operating and it served them well."

But Mr. Wasserstein, still C.E.O. of Lazard-and questions have arisen about the conflicts that his position there as well as the owner of a journalistically aggressive publication will add up to-has paid a lot of money for a magazine that will take a great deal more in reinvestment to restore to a profitable position in the media.

"It's really weird," said one private equity investor who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "I don't understand why he's doing it. This may be an interesting hobby, but it's not an investment. There is some economic value to the magazine. This is a real entity. But in order to justify $55 million, you have to have cash flow north of $5 million annually. At the moment, it's $1 to 2 million."

"I think one of the things that helped the deal is that a rebound is anticipated, certainly next year," said Reed Phillips, managing partner of the media investment firm DeSilva & Phillips. I think that helped push the price on the deal. They wouldn't have got $55 million if there wasn't a rebound in the future. Another tough year would have reflected in the price. I think the price reflects the optimism."

There's optimism, and there's $55 million worth of optimism-a price, sources indicated, that even Mr. Zuckerman and his group weren't willing to reach until late Tuesday, when it no longer mattered. From the beginning, according to multiple sources, Mr. Zuckerman aggressively sought people he knew were dreamy eyed for New York. According to sources, when he learned that Michael Wolff, the magazine's media columnist had lined up Mr. Deutsch and Mr. Epstein as potential investors, Mr. Zuckerman swooped in, convincing them that if they wanted to do this, they should do it with him.

Mr. Wolff declined to comment and Mr. Epstein did not return a call seeking comment. A spokesman said Mr. Deutsch was unavailable for comment. As did a spokesman for Mr. Weinstein, who had been considered well distanced from the magazine business with the wreckage and closure of Talk in early 2002. While the staff of New York was jubilant over Mr. Zuckerman's failure, the media press missed out on the greatest potential limited partnership collision in New York since George Steinbrenner cames to the Bronx.

"I think the consortium was the weakness," said Mr. Felker, the magazine's founding editor. "I mean, the thing is that it's very difficult to have a consortium run a publication, because the editorial process becomes pulled in many directions.

The thing is that a successful magazine must have one voice behind it, and if you have a strong voice like Wasserstein, then the magazine has a chance to work. And some very powerful people have run very tough publications, and they've had all the legal and financial and social entrée and position that anybody can want: Kaye Graham, Henry Luce and Rupert Murdoch. I mean, the power comes from running honest publications with a point of view."

From Off the Record's special correspondent, Michael M. Thomas:

Some three weeks ago, I sent an e-mail to an acquaintance telling him I was thinking about him and rooting for him. It was the most I could do; it-like the prayers and good wishes of all his friends and fans, like the best modern medicine could do-simply wasn't enough. Bob Bartley died last Wednesday, Dec. 10.

Once upon a time, when a gallant and worthy opponent went down, one doffed one's hat and stood aside and paid tribute to a fight well fought, a race well run.

I should like to do so now. In the 15 years I wrote a column for this newspaper, Robert Bartley (and his column in The Wall Street Journal) was the most fun and the most challenging of my targets of choice.

I first met him back in the old days at the Lehrman Institute, in the early Reagan years, when he played the role of Suslov to the new regime's men of the moment, putting bright words in the mouths of idiots, at least one of whom still operates at the very summit of federal influence. Like many persons of strong theoretical conviction, Bob tended to downplay the corrupting human element in the working-out of grand designs in the real world and in real time, and it was there that we had our differences-symbolized by one name: Michael Milken.

But that means nothing now. Bob was smart, he was committed, he was talented, he was influential-largely for the better, I think-and he was honorable and decent. He will be missed enormously, and I can do no better than dip my ensign to him as the last salute is fired.

To his family and colleagues, I extend condolences and sympathy. In the long goodnight, I wish Bob Godspeed.

-Michael M. Thomas

Take Edward Albee's The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? , which as everyone knows is about a happily married, successful architect who falls in love with a goat named Sylvia. It's certainly an unusual idea (though not a new one). Mr. Albee clearly set out to shock us. He announced at the outset: "There's one thing I'm doing in this play: testing the tolerance of the audience. Testing the limits of tolerance."

And this is the thing: Mr. Albee has failed miserably. Everyone finds The Goat utterly harmless. So harmless that the Tony Awards committee beamed with delight and said to Mr. Albee, "Congratulations! Have the Tony Award for Best Play."

When I reviewed The Goat , I wrote that I found it about as shocking as blueberry pie. In my view, Mr. Albee pulled his punches about the boundaries of love and sex, and has given us an obvious tease instead. Far from pushing the limits of theater-let alone creating anything revolutionary-the play thrives precisely because it's essentially a traditional drawing-room drama with a predictable outcome. The goat is just the Other Woman, that's all.

But let's say I've got it wrong and Mr. Albee's play really is shocking. Then the question is: How shocking do you have to be to truly test the limits of tolerance?

Tom Donaghy's play about same-sex couples and gay parenting, Boys and Girls , is a marginal case in point. Very marginal. This fad of adopting children as if shopping for accessories will pass. At least, let's hope it will. I've no doubt that Rosie O'Donnell makes the most perfect parent in all Christendom but, as Plato used to say, enough already! Then again, who wouldn't wish single parent Wendy Wasserstein and her child lots of mazel ? But did we have to hear about Ms. Wasserstein's pregnancy in such excruciating, scientific detail? Whether it's a case of middle-aged single parenting by minor celebs, or the fashion of gay couples adopting adorable children, there must be bigger issues and a bigger world out there. In a word, they should all have their children in private and get on with it.

Mr. Donaghy doesn't think so. Boys and Girls , directed by Gerald Gutierrez, which played at Playwrights Horizons, took its theme of ambivalent love and gay parenting earnestly. And yet, introduced with a postmodern version of "All You Need Is Love," it could also be a cozy domestic comedy. Look at the core of its sketchy story:

The on-again, off-again male lovers, Reed and Jason, flirt with the idea of adopting a child. "For that extra love," explains the needier Reed. His unreliable lover, Jason, is in massive denial about his drinking problem. Reed believes that raising a child would give their rocky relationship glue, hope, a purpose. Reed is just like other folk, the dramatist implies, like the straight folk. In such ways, from the soothing image of middle-class sitcom gays to rather sweet, innocent goats, no one need feel offended or challenged by anything.

Mr. Donaghy's apparently settled lesbian lovers in urban domesticity, Bev and Shelly, have a 4-year-old boy, Georgie. (Just like other folk, like the straight, regular folk.) However, Bev would like Reed, her oldest friend, to move into their duplex and become a surrogate father. The child has been wondering where all the men are.

We learn that Reed once donated his sperm to Bev, but she didn't use it. No wonder Reed is lovelorn. In any case, he wants a child with unreliable, butch Jason. Reed hints romantically to Jason when they're in each other's arms, "What if we did have a child?"

I must say I found that a funny line, but no one else seemed to. As far as I could tell, the audience was on its best behavior for fear of offending anyone. But here we have two gay guys spread-eagled on a bed, and one is saying to the other, "What if we did have a child?" To which the reply ought to have been, "Have it your way. You heard a seal bark."

Does no one get the joke? (Does the playwright?) I thought, until I knew better, that the earnest Mr. Donaghy was really writing a sly parody of gay parenting. "When we have a kid," Reed says later to Jason before they take a little "nap," "we won't be able to do this."

True; but I'm afraid it all reminded me of Very Special Needs , Paul Rudnick's satire of a gay couple, Timmy and Trent, and their adopted child Katinka, who wants to be renamed Tribeca. The issue to begin with is whether Timmy and Trent-exactly like Mr. Donaghy's Jason and Reed-are ready to adopt.

"Of course we are!" says needy Timmy. "It's all I've been dreaming about! I mean, all our friends, almost every gay couple, they all have babies."

"Those are small dogs," Trent replies dryly.

The politically incorrect Mr. Rudnick is satirizing gays who want to be like the straight folk-the married, bourgeois, 1.5-child-raising, "normal," boring straight folk next-door. Mr. Donaghy, a disciple of David Mamet, has humor, but at heart his play couldn't be more conventional. Just as Mametspeak- the fractured, disjointed sentences, the lurking, unspoken subtexts-no longer surprises or shocks us as much as it used to, so Mr. Donaghy's Boys and Girls turns out to be safe and familiar in its own Mametean way.

The dramatist is at his best when suggesting the threat of danger in mundane circumstances (as his mentor is). But he slides merrily into daytime soap. "I'm a drunk, and that's who you love!" Jason protests woozily to the stricken Reed. And the disappointed, angry dyke Shelly, having split up with Bev and their child, sobs over the phone to Mom that she wanted her life with Bev to be like the one her parents have together. Is she crazy? Is she thinking ? Who on earth wants to be their parents? Not me; not you; not in our right minds.

Sooner or later, the smug emotional need for "sameness" will be the death of us. Boys and Girls simplistically suggests that all you need is love. Maybe so; but what we need right now is to be challenged and shaken out of our everyday tiny minds into a brave new world of theatrical ideas. Mr. Donaghy's shallow quartet of unhappy lovers could be more or less anyone, gay or straight, in a small world. The child in the play is unseen; we have no sense of the child's reality.

These quite trendy characters promise the unorthodox, but they're yearningly, droopily conformist. The final image of the evening has the old friends, Reed and Bev, naked in bed together on the verge of something. Years ago, they had an unlikely one-night stand. See? They're really "normal" underneath. As they lay side by side in bed together, the silence between them grows tense. Could they? Should they? Will it last ? If so, will they have their very own child? Mr. Donaghy leaves the possibilities open, encouraging nice, comforting thoughts about them. They can live regular lives!

Meanwhile, we've learned that Jason's hopped a flight with a new rich boyfriend, and they want to adopt their child. I don't know about Shelly. I expect she's gone sulking off home to Mom and that she'll want a new child, too. It'll cheer her up. Plus, Shelly already has a handy dad (who's her own dad).

So it's looking good. Let's see … Shelly, Mom and Dad adopt an orphan named Tribeca and live in Greenwich, Conn., where Rosie O'Donnell and family become their best friends. Jason marries Trent in the South of France, where they adopt a little French girl they've named Shoshanna and are currently living in a villa in St. Tropez. The unlikely lovers Reed and Bev give birth to twins, Jason Jr. and Shel, who become extremely close to Wendy Wasserstein and child. Reed and Bev live in an 18,000-square-foot loft with a teeny-weeny maid's room in Soho. And they all live happily ever after.

Take care now. It could happen to you .

I may say so, is no Tom Stoppard. The comparison wouldn't normally spring to

mind-and it would be an unfair one-were it not for the fact that Ms.

Wasserstein's Old Money , her new play

about old and new money at Lincoln Center's Mitzi E. Newhouse Theatre, has

borrowed uncomfortably from Arcadia ,

Mr. Stoppard's best play that was produced with such distinction at Lincoln

Center five years ago.

Perhaps Old Money

is meant as a kind of tribute. Perhaps no one thought we'd notice. But Ms.

Wasserstein's bewilderingly lame social satire evokes the same time warps

between centuries that take place in a historic house as Mr. Stoppard's famous

play does. To make matters worse, the director, Mark Brokaw, even has couples

from the different centuries dance as if in a dream-mirroring time past

mysteriously melting into time present, as Arcadia

did in its most affecting image.

It wouldn't matter quite so much if Old Money crackled with the wit and intellectual rigor of the

Stoppard, or challenged us to give a thought or two to such vitally important

things as goings-on in gazebos, the romance of ideas, the symbolism of gardens

(classical symmetry to romantic disorder) or the mysteriously unfolding secrets

of an unknowable universe. But Ms. Wasserstein's points about the vulgarities

of new money-let alone old-aren't surprising. They're unearned and shallow,

like the constant name-dropping throughout the piece-a secondhand substitute

for amusing conversation, or even a play.

"Fuck me. Or is this some beautiful house!" announces

zillionaire film producer Sid Nercessian (dressed in a T-shirt and jeans like

David Geffen) as he enters the Upper East Side mansion of Jeffrey Bernstein, a

zillionaire arbitrageur and dull arriviste

in a linen suit. Nercessian is a loud-mouthed vulgarian, naturally. We know

this because he says stuff like "Fuck minimal, give me trees" and "My favorite

fucking people in the world are artists." But Ms. Wasserstein's wince-making

stabs at Hollywood satire only remind us of better versions. E.g., "Honey, was

it Henry James who wrote that Scorsese movie with Winona?"

The action-and there is very little of it-revolves round a

big house party that Bernstein is throwing during August-a test of his power

and a bad running joke in the play. Who would be seen dead in New York in

August? Everyone, apparently. Our host is described by someone else in the play

as a "master at playing the world to his advantage." He's "brilliant, but a

social enigma." He seemed a bit dim to me. But hence his glittering, enigmatic

party in August.

Don't worry if you weren't invited. "Everybody came," as

Alice B. Toklas put it, "and no one made any difference." Ms. Wasserstein drops

all the usual names like a tired mantra of tedium-Diane and Barry, Martha

Stewart, Jeffrey Katzenberg, "Bobby Rubin," "Gwyneth," the Trumps, Puff Daddy,

David Salle, Julian Schnabel, Charlie Rose, Henry Kissinger, etc., etc. There's

a whiff of déjà vu about this "new"

Gilded Age elite, as if her barbarians at the gates are still stuck in the Saul

Steinberg era. Their baubles of wealth are more on the money-restored mansions,

Botox injections, museum board memberships, Gulf jets, party consultants,

surgery. But Ms. Wasserstein's take on celebrity and society is scarcely fresh.

She laboriously explains the obvious. "You see, Mr.

Pfeiffer, in your day it was all about bloodlines," expounds Flinty, a

wealth-obsessed social columnist. She's the Boswell of the new aristocracy for

something called The New York Chronicle .

(The names are real, only the newspaper has been changed to protect the

playwright.) Mr. Pfeiffer is Tobias Vivian Pfeiffer III, a WASP of the old

school and a Louis Auchincloss character who lived in the Bernstein mansion as

a child. He needs flighty Flinty's social lesson like a hole in the head. "Over

50 percent of the richest men in America were also in the Social Register," she

drones on to him, lest we miss Ms. Wasserstein's dated message. "But now

society has merged with celebrity. Cash frankly has superseded class. We live

in an asset-based meritocracy. There are 64 new millionaires a day in Silicon

Valley and no one cares where they came from…."

There's news for you! We live in an age of celebrity! Then

again, these aren't characters, but mouthpieces and labels. There's also

Saulina-the Pure Artist as Troubled Outsider Displaced by a Society Run by

Vulgarians. Saulina's a bohemian sculptress and the ex-sister-in-law of

Bernstein who's given to maudlin pieties in the name of plucky backbone. "I

have very little wisdom, Caroline. But one thing I can promise you," she tells

the suicidal teen daughter of the movie mogul. "If you and I try very hard,

then they don't have to win. But if you give up, you'll never know how strong

you can be."

Saulina is actually the living, wilting contradiction of

inner strength, but let it pass. We are meant to feel for her because she feels

excluded by wealthy ignoramuses. Ms. Wasserstein's sloppy sentiment would like

to have us believe anything. "It's all right," Tobias Vivian Pfeiffer III

consoles Saulina in an intimate moment. "Cry, Selina. Cry for me. Cry for your

sister Jessica. Cry for Ovid and Caroline. Just cry for all of us."

Cut to the commercial. (One thinks.) Who else talks this

way? Our emotional involvement in this crass bunch is presumed, as

name-dropping is presumed to encourage easy laughs. Such names! Ovid-"Cry for

Ovid and Caroline," as opposed to "Don't Cry For Me, Argentina"-is one Ovid

Walpole Bernstein, the mini-adult, 17-year-old son of Jeffrey. Why is a nice

zillionaire like Jeffrey Bernstein naming his son Ovid Walpole? For comic

effect, we assume. For myself, silly names are plain silly. Does Wendy

Washingmachine want us to take her characters seriously or not? Either way,

she's surely been wittier than this. "Do you know the gavotte?" Tobias Vivian

says to Saulina, asking her to dance in an elderly romantic interlude. "Sounds

like a French and Yiddish cake," she replies.

Does it? I'm sorry to harp. But what's French and Yiddish and cake-like about the gavotte? But the strain of being

Stoppardian is nowhere more creaky than in the confusing turn-of-the-century

scenes that are meant to parallel the coarse present. The movie mogul becomes a

bullying Gilded Age Carnegie, the arbitrageur a Jewish department store

entrepreneur, the sculptor the Edwardian eccentric and so on. Vulgar then,

vulgar now, is the unremarkable message. (Shallow then and now, too.)

Ms. Wasserstein's re-creation of the past in Old Money is as sketchy as her present,

but messier. I found it difficult to figure out who was who, or why. An

entrance from the turn of the century is invariably accompanied by much

enforced gaiety and laughter, followed by a rousing chorus of "Ta Ra Ra Boom De

Ay." The stilted, sub-Whartonesque dialogue is too close for comfort to a

version of Ragtime and, worse, Titanic . "Don't you find the 20th

century thrilling, Mr. Strauss?" "You're not worried about the collapse of the

Ottoman Empire, Miss Gallagher?" "Nothing will be the same! Not in painting,

not in marriage, not in war! This will be the century of American ingenuity!"

Truth be told, the Old

Money ensemble seems uncomfortable in the midst of all this self-conscious

tittle-tattle and dud time-bends. Only Mary Beth Hurt in the dual roles of

Saulina/Sally looks as if she might be having some fun. Thomas Lynch's most

handsome mansion set appears grandly as the only authentic touch. The rest is

dispiriting, right down to Ms. Wasserstein's leaden explanation of her own play

through the medical procedure known as "anastomose." It's the process,

apparently, of two arteries becoming one. If so, we're entitled to ask, where's

the blood?

It's no crime to write a poor play, but Ms. Wasserstein has

written a careless, anemic one. Plays of ideas- An American Daughter and now Old

Money -aren't her strength, and Mr. Stoppard, who on occasion can be

effervescently too clever by three-quarters, resides on a lofty perch of his

own.

In her first produced screenplay, Wendy Wasserstein has constructed a many-layered Maypole dance of unrequited love among bright, confused and sexually frustrated New Yorkers. And celebrated director Nicholas Hytner has directed these various relationships with enormous sympathy, compassion and humor, to bless us all with that rarest of experiences–a movie that is lovely and polished, with something human and powerful to say about the survival of the heart.

A feisty, independent and newly pregnant social worker named Nina Borowski (Jennifer Aniston) meets a charming, clean-cut first-grade teacher named George Hanson (Paul Rudd) at a dinner party and accidentally hears his handsome college professor lover (Timothy Daly) drop a hint that George is about to be unceremoniously dumped in favor of a younger student. Nina has a roomy, walk-up apartment in Brooklyn, so she offers George a place to stay. George accepts, and the most important relationship of their lives hits the ground running, despite the objections of a lively cast of annoying busybodies. Nina's boyfriend, a civil liberties lawyer named Vince (John Pankow), her snobbish, interfering stepsister Constance (the wonderful Allison Janney) and her name-dropping brother-in-law Sidney, a pretentious literary agent played with maddening panache by Alan Alda, all object to Nina's new living arrangement. Meanwhile, Constance is always trying to fix Nina up with suitable bachelors who bore her; George has seen enough insincerity with his brother Frank (Steve Zahn) and his string of discarded bimbos; and Vince goes ballistic when Nina decides to raise their baby with her gay roommate instead of him.

Isolating themselves from so much invasive stress, Nina and George find in each other the fun, trust and friendship they never found in their sexual partners, and become a surrogate family. George doesn't even miss men so much when he's with Nina, and neither does she. Up to this point, what I missed was logic. I suppose this sort of thing could happen, but don't you have to become a Scientologist or something?

Never underestimate the heart or the wisdom of Wendy Wasserstein. Every time the plot edges toward incredulity, she sends her characters into a more truthful direction. True, Nina falls in love with George and the inevitable jealousies and resentments ensue, but Ms. Wasserstein is not saying women are by nature possessive as much as she's asking if this kind of relationship can ever work at all. George meets a man he can finally relate to, a young actor (Amo Gulinello) who is being kept by an aging drama critic (played by the great Nigel Hawthorne), and Nina even tries to include them all, but when the old critic says in a moment of intimacy, "Have you noticed you're the only woman at your Thanksgiving table? And the only practicing heterosexual?" she finally realizes she hasn't been practicing lately. It's time to face the music. George is happy and well adjusted being gay; Nina is the one bricking herself in at the most vulnerable time of her life, and she's also on the dangerous verge of turning into a New York fag hag in the bargain. Nina's point of view is, You have to pick one person and make it work. Ms. Wasserstein's question is, Can this work at all if the object of affection is gay, married, or, in other words, emotionally unavailable?

Wonderful performances filled with understated radiance and courage aid the film immeasurably. (It's the best role of Ms. Aniston's career, and the camera is in love with Mr. Rudd.) But it's really Ms. Wasserstein's spin on modern sexual confusion and the always changing nature of relationships that gives this extraordinary film its luminous center. She's opened up the beloved novel by Stephen McCauley in rich and surprising ways, filled the spaces with smart, engaging lines ("George lives with a woman." "Really? How Bloomsbury!") and revealed something about her own capacity for nonjudgmental clemency in the process. Everything she feels about these people, with all of their disappointments and broken hearts, is processed and refined into a film of gentle, yet unflinchingly honest observations we can all identify with. If she's jaded about ideal love, she hasn't lost her elation about the possibility that it may still exist. (It's no accident that the film's theme song is Gene Kelly singing "You Were Meant for Me.")

In the end, when you see how everyone turns out, you are left with an overwhelming optimism. In life, and especially in a big city, where sex is like a Chinese menu and love affairs are fleeting, you are lucky if the joy and pain and loss of your relationships add up to an extended cosmic family of friendships. There are no villains and victims in The Object of My Affection , just people going through the same ups and downs as you and me. It's brainy, touching and absolutely enchanting. I always say I'm one of those tough guys who hasn't shed a tear in a movie since Lassie Come Home , but The Object of My Affection proves me a liar.

The Preppie Kidnapping

Another major surprise: Suicide Kings may be the most brilliantly conceived crime puzzle since The Usual Suspects . In a sudden and rather baffling overload of movies about phony kidnap capers gone awry, this is the only one I couldn't figure out from the first scene. Written by a talented trio of sleuths (Josh McKinney, Gina Goldman and Wayne Allan Rice), strongly and confidently directed by Peter O'Fallon, who is making an impressive feature film debut, and starring an exceptional cast of bristling and gifted actors, Suicide Kings is a real sleeper.

When a reckless rich kid (Henry Thomas) whose sister has been kidnapped by hoods recruits four of his prep school pals to take a retired gangster (Christopher Walken) hostage in order to raise a $2 million ransom, they have no idea what they're getting into. Mr. Walken, as an ex-mobster named Carlo Bartolucci who now calls himself Charlie Barrett, finds himself tied to a wheelchair, drugged and defenseless, with a finger missing, but he's not down for the count by a long shot. The boys, who have more nerve than sense, are in over their preppy heads while their hostage, who could kill them in a wink, also becomes their only ally. While the old crook watches coldly and wryly, trying to stay alive long enough to outwit his captors, the boys get an unforgettable taste of the real underworld and discover it ain't like the movies.

Charlie is so tough he's "got guys who could make the Virgin Mary pose for a centerfold" and the privileged, overindulged rich kids, with more arrogance than brains, see their simple plan land them on the dark side of the moon. Meanwhile, the film explores the divergent personalities of the boys as well as the activities of an assortment of goons on the outside (where were movie criminals before cell phones?) while a much more complicated plot unravels snafus and double-crosses that will keep you paralyzed with suspense. There are fresh twists throughout, every kid is hiding a secret, the kidnapping may or may not be real, and everything builds to a hair-raising climax that will curl your socks.

The cast is as fresh as the screenplay. Mr. Thomas, all grown up since E.T. , is more sinister than his baby face implies, and his co-conspirators–Jeremy Sisto, Jay Mohr, Johnny Galecki and especially Sean Patrick Flanery, a newcomer with so much talent and appeal he lights a torch to the camera–all seem destined for stardom. Denis Leary, as a hit man with a passion for exotic shoes, and Mr. Walken, as the Mafia don who hasn't forgotten how to act like one, are rivetingly crazy. Suicide Kings has some stunningly executed action sequences, the characterizations have depth, the use of locations, décor and music is inspired. A don't-miss entertainment of broiling intensity.