Next: the Manhattan Theatre Club (“I did ‘Wit’ here, and ‘Rabbit Hole’ ”), the Glass House Tavern (“Still a good place to eat”), and the Barrymore. “I did ‘Hurlyburly’ here. I think I did ‘Indiscretions’ here,” she said. (She did.) “This is the Ethel Barrymore. Everybody just calls it the Barrymore, but it’s not John, it’s not Lionel—it’s Ethel.” In 1984, as a student at Barnard, Nixon performed in David Rabe’s “Hurlyburly” and Tom Stoppard’s “The Real Thing”—both directed by Mike Nichols—simultaneously, her entrances and exits timed just right. “I would walk through the Edison hotel” as a shortcut between the theatres, she said. She did it again now—tourists, red velvet, Christmas jazz—and emerged by the Richard Rodgers (“Hamilton”). “Nichols directed by anecdote, and kind of by parable,” she said. “He would tell you all these things about his own life. It wasn’t name-dropping, because those were all his friends.” He was warm, too. Whoopi Goldberg was performing her groundbreaking self-titled show at the Lyceum, and “she was lonely because she was in a one-woman show,” Nixon said. “Mike said, ‘Oh, the “Hurlyburly” cast will be your cast.’ ” After work, they’d all hang out.