Candace Bushnell burst through the doors at the Daryl Roth Theatre on 15th Street like a woman who knows where she’s going. She arrived at her temporary place of work with hair trifurcated by candy-colored velour scrunchies, and her two poodles, Pepper and Prancer, in tow. As she hustled all three of us onto an elevator down to her pink-inflected green room, she quickly explained that the scrunchies were a hairstylist’s recommendation. The three buns would keep the curl longer than quicker methods, which is true, though at present, it gave her the effect of a wide-eyed Cindy Lou available to answer all my burning questions on Whoville. Whatever. Some things are worth the wait and a little messiness.
The curl must hold during her one-hour-and-change one-woman show, Is There Still Sex in the City?, which began previews in November and is running until February. The show doesn’t so much as offer an answer to that question as give a brief history of Bushnell’s extraordinary life, told comedically, even the bad stuff, in her signature playful tone. Right now, about 35 shows in, she’s getting a handle on the fact that an audience is present every night.
“I think it’s a little bit like a stand-up show,” she told me. “I used to talk to Denis Leary about it. It’s like, sometimes you go in front of these audiences, and I’ll just be like, ‘Denis, sometimes they laugh at everything you say, and then other times you’re dying up there.’ And he was like,…
