The impulse to applaud Alexander Dodge's meticulously appointed set is overpowering, just as it is in the second act when he moves uptown to a palatial pad on Park Avenue, which has pink walls with matching birdcage-cover and a staircase for grand entrances.

You're in a world that all but Roundabout's Todd Haimes forgot — the old-fashioned Play-Play: specifically, John Van Druten's Old Acquaintance. By any other name, it could be Cats, being a title bout between two lady authors, pals since childhood, who exchange three rounds — er, acts — of friendly fire and 67-year-old sophistication that still has snap.

In all of its incarnations, this close-quarters head-butting has been quite a workout for resourceful, redoubtable actresses: Jane Cowl and Peggy Wood in the 1940 Broadway original, Bette Davis and Miriam Hopkins in the 1943 movie version, Jacqueline Bisset and Candice Bergen in the 1981 film remake ("Rich and Famous," George Cukor's last opus) and, now, in its first Broadway revival, Margaret Colin and Harriet Harris.

Colin is the sensible, centered one, Katherine Markham — Kit — a prestigious but parsimonious scribe and scholar who specializes in critical successes (and damn few of those); Harris is the cranky, conniving one, Mildred Watson Drake — Milly — a prolific and profitable hack whose output brings her all that money can buy (and it's still not enough).

That's the way they plotted plays back then. Another sign of the times: both writers are well off enough to afford maids. (Gordana Rashovich for Kit and Cynthia Darlow for Milly also come in handy understudying their respective mistresses-of-the-house.)

The opening-night party was held on the ninth floor of the Marriott Marquis Hotel, and first-nighters were greeted at the door with their choice of drink: Sweet Kit ("Hangar Mandarin Kiss Vodka, Izze Clementine, Sugar Rim, Cherry Garnish") or Sour Milly ("Hangar Kaffir Lime Vodka, Izze Grapefruit, Lemon Garnish"). The Kit was tres sweet, but the Milly seemed like it could get you thoroughly undone in nothing flat.

Harris waved away the Sour Milly, being a working actress with a show to do tomorrow. She works overtime, too — like a dog with a rag, extracting the laughs from petty Milly. "It's a fun part to do," she admitted, "and it was a great house tonight. Margaret and I, at the end of Act I, went: 'Okay. That's how it's supposed to go. This is how we play it.' "People, actually, rarely write a show like this anymore. I've had some friends come to the show who are writers, and they say, 'Oh, my gosh, there're like 15 minutes of fights' — van Druten's laying pipes — so, by the time characters start coming on and their problems are revealed, you have so much backstory. I think it's a well-written play."

Harris takes the role as if it were a stick-shift, playing broadly when the situation calls for it and then bringing it down to nuance level and human size. "By the time you're getting laughs with little things, a turn of the head or whatever, the audience is with you, and they understand your makeup. They're not having to fill in the blanks. They understand these things. I think that van Druten really gave those two characters a lot of background."

This is not the first time Harris has done a play that Bette Davis did on film. She did Davis' role in The Man Who Came to Dinner, Maggie Cutler, secretary and confidante to Nathan Lane's Sheridan Whiteside. Lane was in the front-rank of first-nighters and sat next to her at the party. "Nathan is a very sweet and supportive guy," she said.

Although Davis played the Colin role in the movie edition, she initially opted for the flashier part of Milly — and would have played it if Norma Shearer could have been lured out of retirement to play Kit. When she couldn't, Davis chose nobility over flash.

Colin is a very anchoring presence on stage, allowing Harris to fly as high as she can. "Since it's a period piece, you have to let it take its own exploration to make it relevant," she noted. "The play has so many issues that are just very near and dear to my heart: patterning yourself as a role model when you're not really a role model, having your heart broken by a lover who doesn't want you anymore, reinvesting in that friendship. It was fun to rehearse it for the values that are there and then kick it up for the comedy."

She owned up to a little nipping-and-tucking on the text. "Some smart cuts were made, but it was mostly about behaving like real people on stage and responding in a real way." Continued...