“Even though Wonderful Town was written in the fifties, the experience it describes of coming to New York as an artist is the same today,” says Jennifer Westfeldt, who makes her Broadway debut in the musical, which opens November 23. “I had such crazy day jobs, three at once! I worked at a gym, a restaurant, as a paralegal, all while doing an Off Broadway play.” Westfeldt plays Eileen, one of two Ohio sisters (Donna Murphy plays the bookish Ruth) looking for love and success in the Big Apple. “Eileen is a wide-eyed, living-in-the-moment, falling-in-love-with-everyone-she-meets kind of girl,” says Westfeldt, who’s from Connecticut. That makes her the opposite of Jessica Stein, Westfeldt’s breakout role in the 2001 girl-meets-girl film Kissing Jessica Stein, which she also co-wrote. “Jessica’s more like Ruth, an overthinker who pushes men away.” But Wonderful Town and Kissing Jessica Stein share more than just a hypersmart heroine. “They’re both about two women with big dreams who help each other,” says Westfeldt. “And you don’t see shows about that very often.”