What happens when you put a Tony-winning producer and a former theatre columnist together? Believe it or not, you get a comedy about producing on Broadway. Or so it seems with Stewart F. Lane, the producer of such shows as 1776 and La Cage aux Folles, and Ward Morehouse III, until recently the theatre reporter for the New York Post. The unlikely duo has teamed to pen the new comedy, If It Were Easy.

Lane described the work as being in the tradition of the Ben Hecht-Charles MacArthur classics The Front Page and The Twentieth Century.

"I'm talking to a few theatre companies about a production out of town," said Lane, who added that he'd know more details in the near future.

Lane is the head of a producing group called the Producers Network, which is examining the possibility of sponsoring a season of low-budget Off Broadway musicals during the 1999-2000 season.

Morehouse was the Post's regular theatre reporter and theatre columnist for five years. His tenure ended last fall, when he was replaced by The Daily News' Michael Riedel. --By Robert Simonson