Who is this Anita Gates you speak of?

A.G.’s journalistic triumphs over 25 years at The New York Times include drinking with Bea Arthur (at a Trump hotel), Wendy Wasserstein (at an Italian restaurant) and Peter O’Toole (in his trailer on a mini-series set near Dublin). It is sheer coincidence that these people are now dead.

At The New York Times, she has been Arts & Leisure television editor and co-film editor, a theater reviewer on WQXR Radio, a film columnist for the Times TV Book and an editor in the Culture, Book Review, Travel, National, Foreign and Metro sections. Her first theater review for The Times appeared in 1997, assessing “Mrs. Cage,” a one-act about a housewife suspected of shooting her favorite supermarket box boy. The review was mixed.

Outside The Times, A.G. has been the author of four nonfiction books; a longtime writer for travel magazines, women's magazines and travel guidebooks; a lecturer at universities and for women’s groups; and a moderator for theater, book, film and television panels at the 92nd Street Y and the Paley Center for Media.

If she were a character on “Mad Men,” she’d be Peggy.

Who Will Save Broadway? Maybe 'Saturday Night Live' Just Did

Anita Gates
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TORCH SONG. Maya Rudolph as the Statue of Liberty in an eight-minute musical sketch from the Halloween episode of NBC’s “Saturday Night Live.”

MAYA RUDOLPH DID NOT look happy as she made her entrance, playing the Statue of Liberty, on the Halloween episode of “Saturday Night Live.” But what we were seeing in her eyes was determination — as she launched into a stirring parody version of “I’m Still Here,” the fuck-you-as-long-as-I’m-breathing-I’m-working-it anthem from “Follies.”

This was not the first “SNL” Broadway-medley sketch with a motley crew of Times Square characters, but it may have been the most powerful.

In the original song, an aging showgirl recalls having survived “Herbert and J Edgar Hoover,” among other horrors. In the new version, Liberty has survived “Warhol and Bethenny Frankel,” not to mention the ‘86 Mets and a Soon-Yi sighting on the PATH train.

Liberty is a real New Yorker: “I do the marathon, but I walk,” she announces. And “My first apartment was a drawer.”

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Other show tunes that got the parody treatment — from characters including Minnie Mouse, Elmo, a Minion and the Bubba Gump shrimp mascot — included these: “One Singular Sensation” from “A Chorus Line,” “Send In the Clowns” from “A Little Night Music” and “Hey, Big Spender” from “Sweet Charity.” The big finish was a revised version of “One Day More” (now “three days more” — until the election) from “Les Misérables.””

Thanks, Maya. Thanks, Lorne. Here’s the link.

Chatting With Dawn French on a Stormy Night in Cornwall

Everybody's Reviewing the Streaming Stuff (Including Us)