PLAYS VS. MUSICALS. Yesterday on the TKTS line, a woman asked me the difference between plays and musicals. "Well," I explained, "musicals have music."

There's another difference between plays and musicals: TKTS has an express line for plays. It's much shorter than the line for musicals, so picking up a couple of $49.25 tickets for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf was a fairly painless endeavor.

Try to see Woolf before it closes on September 4. The play is a tough one to pull off, but actors Bill Irwin and Kathleen Turner do very fine work with director Anthony Page. It's much warmer and easier-to-bear Woolf than the movie version--yet it's still puzzling and provocative.

Other plays available at TKTS Thursday: Doubt, Thom Pain (based on nothing), and The Pillowman.