The Musical Mondays series of new musical readings continues in the intimate upstairs ballroom of New York City's Century Center for the Performing Arts with A Room With a View (Nov. 12) and a hip retelling of As You Like It, now called Like You Like It (Dec. 3). Musical Mondays producing director Bick Goss directs both readings.

The first is a version of the E.M. Forster novel about Brits bewitched by Italy, with words and music by Robert Firpo Cappiello. Billed as "witty and elegant," the show focuses on Lucy Honeychurch as she decides between "the insufferably suitable Cecil Vyse and the unsuitable George Emerson."

Like You Like It is a new musical inspired by As You Like It, now set in an American mall (the Arden Mall) in the 1980s. The show is described as being a mix of Shakespeare's story and the yearning characters of John Hughes' films. Book and lyrics are by Sammy Buck and music is by Daniel S. Acquisto.

Musicals are presented informally, often with just piano and voice and scripts in hand. Presentations, open to the public, are 8 PM.

In a recently-added extra that Goss jokingly dubs "Musical Tuesdays," Nov. 13 and 20 bring A Wind Has Blown the Rain Away: An Evening of ee cummings Songs with Ellen Mandel at the piano and Todd Almond, baritone, singing. The Century Center for the Performing Arts, known for its theatre that houses Off-Broadway fare such as The Play About the Baby and the current The Complete Works of William Shakespeare Abridged, is at 111 E. 15th Street just east of Union Square. A $10 donation is suggested. For information, call (212) 982-6782, ext. 19.

— By Kenneth Jones
and David Lefkowitz