STAGE

When Ellen Simon’s play “Moonlight and Valentino” opened at Duke University in Durham, N.C., over the weekend, there was another Simon in the audience who knows a bit about playwriting, her father Neil. Like many of her father’s works, “Moonlight” has some autobiographical roots--humor and tragedy in a woman’s life after her husband is killed in a car accident (recalling the death of Ellen’s husband in 1987). One character is based loosely on Ellen’s ex-stepmother, actress Marsha Mason, who was also in the audience.