“Don’t put money in show business!” said Chief Sitting Bull in Irving Berlin’s “Annie Get Your Gun.”

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Well, I’m no expert on the American theater, just a big fan. And I don’t have money to invest. But if I had any dough, I’d offer it to the writers Nora and Delia Ephron and their producer Daryl Roth and their director Karen Carpenter and the author Ilene Beckerman.

Nora, Delia and pals have been presenting their adaptation, a “reading” that presents a part of Ilene’s book Love, Loss, and What I Wore and the Ephrons’ own original ideas about women and clothes. This has been running for a number of weeks down at the DR2 Theater on 15th Street. They managed to inveigle a cast of diverse and ever-changing talents to “read” the Ephron-created version. The night I saw it, the actors were Tyne Daly, Rosie O’Donnell, Samantha Bee, Veanne Cox and Lucy DeVito. They were all simply splendid.

On other nights, other worthies have and will volunteer for duty. This was all ostensibly a benefit for the Actors Fund and I sent in my widow’s mite check accordingly — I was satisfied and delighted.

But if I’d been a gambling type, I’d have tried to get a chunk of this future production, for without changing a word or gesture, they’ll have one of the biggest hits ever seen off-Broadway. (Move over “Vagina Monologues!”)

They say women are taking over the world. I think in some respects this is true, though women will forever be aimed at for talking about, philosophizing about and being concerned with the men who did or didn’t “get away.” And that’s all well and good, but this event is about something else. This play/reading/polemic is so funny and so powerful; so dear and sweet; so remindful of our female wiles, our worries, our insecurities, our remembrances of mother, father, sisters, brothers, lovers – I think it can’t miss.

Let’s say they get it up and running with the actors seated “reading” their parts. Maybe big stars like Tyne and Rosie can’t “commit” for long runs. It hardly matters; other fabulous talents will take their places. Audiences will be enthralled, riveted, laughing, crying, recognizing, rejoicing in the voices that remember what they wore when, what their families said, how their pals reacted and how their marriages, divorces, romances resulted.

Theater is ever-changing, evocative, unusual, familiar, sometimes dreadful but affecting in our lives. I never thought anyone could make a play “reading” into anything other than a one-night-only event. (The creators always hope the Shuberts or Nederlanders or Jujamcyn will swoop in and make it a “real” play, providing that the creators rewrite it, recast it, raise millions to put it on.) Never mind!

Nora and Delia already have their version done, presented, finished. It’s sweet and saucy. This is an evening that goes directly to the heart, soul and vanity of every woman, young or old. The Ephron girls have touched our funny bones over the years, mended or predicted our broken hearts, commiserated over our bodies, made us laugh and get over it. Now we just have to line up at the box office.

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Spotted at West Hollywood’s Sunset Tower Hotel: Oscar-winning “Milk” star Sean Penn, dining and chatting it up with the adorable actress Natalie Portman. They were in deep, head-to-head.

Now, don’t get the wrong idea. Sean is much estranged from wife Robin Wright, although Robin did accompany Penn to the Academy Awards, and looked properly misty as her husband accepted his Oscar. (Tears of happiness, perhaps? “Last time I walk the red carpet with him!”)

Why Natalie Portman? “Sean likes smart women, and they have political and social causes dear to their hearts,” says one L.A. insider. Sean and Natalie swapped political theories and enthused over the good that comes from fighting for the underdog long, long, long into the night.

It was terribly brainy.