The Polish Tea Boom

If you don't know what Manny Azenberg, Bernie Jacobs, Mike Nichols, and the rest of those guys who run Broadway but resemble piece-goods dealers look like, you probably snicker at the velvet rope that cordons off the Edison coffee shop's box-office-size V.I.P. section: one pink vinyl banquette and two Formica tables with their own exclusive ketchup bottles. But since most of "The Polish Tea Room" 's clientele have no idea who they are either, the moguls don't have to "do" lunch, they can eat it, and decide in peace the fate of those playing with their blinis uptown at the Russian Tea Room. Overheard one matinee day:

"We can't use Nelson [Juddl. New York don't know him and he got too much hair."

"It was cut for Billionaire Boys Club."

"Then I guess it's his face."

"Everyone likes Broderick's [Matthew]."

"Sweet. But he needs years and a weight-gain program."

"Malkovich [John]?"

"Too much hair now, too."

"But that's a wig [in Burn This]—"

"We need someone with discreet arrogance. V *

Does Brian Dennehy have a son? A young Dean >0^,

Stockwell. Gentlemen, I'm running late and they don't have the right limo drivers in this town. Try to get Penn [Sean] and up the insurance and let's go on this as a maybe. Who's gonna wrap this pastrami?"

Even if the R.T.R. also has power lunches to go, it's far more appropriate, if theater is illusion, to create it atop simulated woodgrain.

HAL RUBENSTEIN