Inqlings | Fringe goes retro with radio

The Fringe Festival is nothing if not quirky. One act won't even be there physically - until the end.

But it will be in cyberspace.

The Many Men of Martha Manning, set in Pepper Pickle, Pa., in 1957, is an old-fashioned, six-part serial - a podcast.

Cooked up over drinks by radio ad guy David Witz, actress Grace Gonglewski, and improv master Karen Getz, it includes a cast whose voices are familiar to radio listeners (Jennifer Childs, Greg Giovanni, Sharon Geller, Cecelia Birt, Jim Nettleton, Wes Heywood, Eileen Brady, Rich Orlow and Charlie Roney). They added music by Len Miller, and taped at Second Street Studios. Hear Episode One at www.marthamanning.org, which went up yesterday.

A live Martha performance is scheduled for the final day of the festival in mid-September. Witz says he has no idea yet what the show will look like, "but as Martha says, 'No pressure, no diamonds.' "

Last call will be Saturday for two high-end restaurants:

Felicia's

, which opened 20 years ago at 11th and Ellsworth, and

Restaurant M

, the newish garden spot in the Morris House, the boutique hotel on Eighth Street near Pennsylvania Hospital.

Nick Meglino of Felicia's, who says he's selling to guys planning a pub, wants to cater and start anew.

M's story "comes down to numbers," says owner Michael DiPaolo, biz partner of Gene Lefevre. "On many nights, we had more people in the kitchen than in the [26-seat] dining room." DiPaolo says it was losing $5,000 a week - though the hotel is profitable, as are private events handled by four caterers. So M will go private, and much-applauded chef David Katz and staff are job-hunting.

Fox29's

Sheinelle Jones

has been on

Good Day

this week - sans engagement ring. Relax, she explains. It's with a Chicago jeweler who is fashioning her wedding band. Jones and college sweetheart

Uche Ojeh

will hitch later this summer.

Central Bucks East friends (and budding thespians) Allisha Smith, Abbey Philips and Amanda Alayan turn up on the MTV series Made at noon Saturday as they compete for a role on ABC's All My Children.

South Jersey actors Jonnie Brown and Marvina Vinique appear in the Bollywood film Apne, whose U.S. premiere is tomorrow. It'll screen at the Regal Barn in Doylestown and the Burlington Regal in New Jersey. Brown, who was dirty cop Eddie Walker on HBO's The Wire, plays a boxing champ. Vinique, his real-life fiancee and a vet of The Wire and the film Shadowboxer, is his wife.

London's Royal Ballet needs unpaid extras for performances of Swan Lake and Romeo and Juliet at the Mann Music Center from July 10 to 14. (The commitment includes an all-day rehearsal July 9.) E-mail Anne-Marie Mulgrew at annemarie@danceaffiliates.org.

On today's section front, that's

Florence Hanford

, who hosted the cooking show

TV Kitchen

on Channel 3 from 1947 to 1969. Now 98 and living in Glen Mills, she recently enthralled the Broadcast Pioneers of Philadelphia with stories during a luncheon to mark Channel 3's 75th anniversary, which is today. (KYW was W3XE on June 28, 1932.) To cope with the hot lights used back then, she subbed mashed potatoes for ice cream and made Jell-O seven times its strength. "They originally brought in models to audition for the show," says Hanford, who previously led cooking demos at Wanamaker's, "but the models couldn't cook."

Aren't they still saying that about some of the TV food hosts today?