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But Broadway is still the dream of stage-struck thespians.

“No, it’s the toasting fork, with Mother’s shoe on it instead of the bread. Beth’s stage-struck!” cried Meg, and the rehearsal ended in a general burst of laughter.

I saw it with my equally stage-struck friend, Scot Osterweil, and after the show we dissected it with the intensity common to know-it-all theater nerds the world over.

Taken by this “pretty, funny and entrancing girl,” he wrote, and as a stage-struck young man intrigued by her connection to S. N. Behrman, he asked her to profile an editorial writer.

The rapport with the audience that Davis has spent the show nurturing really pays off here; he handles the stage-struck children’s replies, which range from stony silence to oversharing, wittily and affectionately.