‘Go out and get yourself a redeye,’ she said in mock Mae West.

Dilettantes of the stage from as far away as Newbury Park and Fillmore paid $7.50 apiece in Moorpark on Saturday night to watch the Magnificent Moorpark Melodrama & Vaudeville Co. perform a work whose most serious line came from a Saskatchewan barmaid at the end of Act I:

“The bar will be open for the next 15 minutes,” she said in mock Mae West. “Go out and get yourself a redeye.”

That was only partly a joke. The bar was open. It wasn’t serving anything called a redeye, but it did have five brands of beer to go with the hot dogs, pretzels, popcorn and sweets.

The patrons were allowed to carry what they bought back to their seats. Wooden planks were secured to the back of each row of seats, several inches higher than a church kneeler, to put the pitchers of beer on.

The bar had been open before the play started, so there were already some empty pitchers on the planks when the curtain fell on Act I. Several actors costumed as Canadian Mounties, dancing girls and drunken loggers collected these while the patrons were in the foyer buying more.

The Magnificent Moorpark Melodrama & Vaudeville Co. was founded two years ago by Kirk Aiken, chairman of the Moorpark College art department. Aiken became the owner of the town’s 1920s theater when he bought up a city block. His investments turned out well, leaving him a few thousand dollars to play with.

He used it to refurbish the theater in the lavender splendor of the 1890s and to hire about 20 local actors at $50 a week to pursue a form of drama that doesn’t tax the brain too much.

This weekend the group will conclude its production of “Singing Mountie,” written by former television director J. C. Lewis, who is retired and living in Palm Springs.

Its heroine is Eloise Courage, the daughter of a British military man. She is played by Heidi Goodspeed, in real life an administrative assistant from Agoura. In the play she has followed her fiance, Horatio King, to the New World where he is a captain in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Horatio is played by Ron Woodward. He delivers flowers in real life.

Horatio tracks and subdues the villain, La Rue La Blum, who is really Stuart Berg, a shipper for a Fillmore computer firm. Horatio’s only weapon is his mellifluous voice. He meets many perils but always sings his way out.

His triumphs produced much cheering. And, of course, the villain got booed.

Saturday’s performance reached its dramatic peak with Horatio’s soliloquy:

“Love, what a beautiful word. Love. When I was a little lad, I had a pet billy goat. I called my billy goat Billy. He called me Baa. I loved my billy goat and my billy goat loved me, always happily wagging his tail, never complaining, never saying a word, except my name, ‘Baa.’ A deep love. A silent love. My billy goat died.

“Then, when I reached manhood, I knew another love. The love of God’s greatest creation, Woman. I still hear her voice as she tried to inspire me up and up the ladder of success, a strong love, a compelling love; the kind of love that drives a man mad, mad. I miss my billy goat.”

Horatio finally got back to Eloise’s arms. But that wasn’t The End.

After a second intermission with open bar, the cast came back on for a lively 45 minutes of vaudeville. They sang songs like “Once in Love With Amy,” “Bicycle Built for Two” and “Whatever Lola Wants.”

As the audience left, the performers held out empty pitchers of beer. One actress made a sad face at everyone who passed. But a dollar cheered her up.

Another villain who in real life got rich and famous by not taxing the brain too much reaped one more payoff Monday night at the Sportsmen’s Lodge in Studio City. He was given the Citizenship Through Entertainment Award of the San Fernando Valley Criminal Bar Assn.

“It’s a rare pleasure to have Vincent Price share this evening with us, and I promise that everyone will leave--alive,” said Municipal Judge Roy M. Carstairs.

In fairness, Carstairs recited some of Price’s urbane achievements like graduating from Yale and becoming a matinee idol in 1935 as Prince Consort Albert in “Victoria Regina.”

“Is it ‘Reg i na’ or ‘Reg e na’ ” he asked the 73-year-old actor.

He said Price’s turning point came in his role as the sinister Mr. Manningham in “Angel Street,” of which a critic wrote, “He has never been nearly so fine as the cold, sneering, implacable husband.”

For those qualities, Carstairs presented Price with a plaque that described him as the man who “made the macabre funny and villainy a delight.”

When it was his turn, Price said, “I’ve played a lot of villains, and I like to play villains because I get tired of playing good guys.”

He said he always answers, “No,” when people ask him, “Does it worry you that you are typecast?”

“It’s the fact that you are typecast which gives you your fame. I am a very famous man. I want you to know that,” he said, introducing a story about a woman who mistook him for Boris Karloff.

Price showed his Yale erudition by reciting a poem of Oscar Wilde, that even more famous person he played for five years in hundreds of performances of the one-man drama “Diversions and Delights.”

It taxed the brain a bit too much to follow. But he ended with a poem whose message was clear. It was called “The Conquering Worm,” and it ended with the macabre declaration that “the play is the tragedy of man and its hero is the conquering worm.”