So I went into NYC this week to see a staged reading of a new musical based on Jane Austen’s SENSE  AND SENSIBILITY. Great book. Great performers. I was actually moved during the two hour stripped down performance. This is a solid and very promising beginning. BUT there isn’t one break out hummable tune. That’s a problem for a musical.

But I did have a fabulous lunch at the The Lever House (as in Lever Brothers)
The restaurant–one of the hippest, chicest in NYC is called “Casa Lever” and the food was great, decor Mad Man sleek, with Warhol-esque photos of everyone from Giorgio Armani to Jerry Hall on the walls. Mick Jagger (Jerry’s ex) was in last week and sat beneath her huge photos!!
The owner looks like Rupert Everett–only MUCH better and nicer. His name is Gherardo Guarducci. See this link: The Moment: The Insiders | Gherardo Guarducci and Dimitri Pauli 

 Post Jane Austen me and my pal Marji Borkow–my trusted producer of 18 years–caught up with one of the biggest producers on Broadway, B.U.’s Jon Platt– theatre junkie and self-made Broadway Titan. He just won his 4th Tony for GOD OF CARNAGE, and is currently producing the most successful musical on stage all over the world–WICKED!! He is working on a couple of very exciting projects at the moment and I will blog about it when I can. We cracked ourselves up over dinner, and grew misty-eyed about the days when TV cameras showed up for opening nights at the Wilbur, the Wang, the Colonial, the Shubert, and critics raced to get their reviews out–I used to do it within an hour of the curtain coming down; my lipstick wasn’t always on– but I was, by 11:22 every night. I loved beating the print media to the punch. Now we’ve got doppler radar, and sports, and weather, and fires, and weather, and car crashes, murders, rapes robberies– and did I mention weather and sports? Do I sound bitter??
I still think there’s room for GOOD NEWS and some of the REMARKABLE things that people do–namely the artists and their work, so important to our lives. Hey–and it’s entertaining too. Much more fun than doppler radar.