Mr. Klugman, who always said he preferred acting in the theater, recalled initially turning down the television role in "The Odd Couple".
"We shared the same geeky enthusiasm for musical theater," recalled Ms. Dewing, who was living with her mother in Scotland, Md., at the time.
The low-key atmosphere (food and drinks are allowed inside the theater) recalls the intimate pleasure of attending a college or community playhouse.
Aysegul Kandemir, who moved to Berlin from Istanbul to study theater, recalled a sudden knot of fear in her stomach when, while auditioning for the "Ring" production last autumn, she realized that she knew almost nothing about Wagner.
Non-English dialogue is very rare on Broadway, but Mr. Hwang said he is hoping for a "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" moment for the theater, recalling the huge commercial success of that 2000 action-fantasy film about swordsmen and secrets in 18th-century China.
"Pokemon," most theater personnel recall, was the opposite -- lines down the block, all day long.
The other characters, while much more likable, are so thinly drawn that it's hard, a few minutes after leaving the theater, to recall anything they did or said.
"He said he didn't need a mike in this theater," she recalled.
Dr. Basting, who has studied elderly theater troupes, recalled that one member declared that the age of 90 was "true freedom".
"I was trying to create a metaphor for theater," she recalled, "a space where you don't know what's going to happen.
