Jolly Good Fun

As the 200th production in its 40-year history, the Conejo Players have chosen “Me and My Girl.”

A cheerful English musical dating back 60 years or so, it’s the story of a Cockney lad unexpectedly plunged into high society--its similarities to “My Fair Lady” (or George Bernard Shaw’s original “Pygmalion”) do not go unreferenced in the script.

The Dickensian plot finds Bill Snibson (Jim Holmes), the previously unknown heir to a vast fortune and--this is what really upsets the class-conscious Brits--a peerage, as the Earldom of Hareford via a youthful indiscretion by the former earl. This turn of fortune affects cousins Lady Jacqueline Carstone (K. Leigh Sandness) and the Honorable Gerald Bolingbroke (Tyler S. Wright), who had expected the family fortune to fall to them. Bolingbroke, a lazy twit in the classic British tradition, can do nothing; Carstone is determined to become Mrs. Snibson. High jinks, needless to add, ensue.

The show, revised for a 1984 London revival by actor and author Stephen Fry and that production’s director, Mike Ockrent, arrived on Broadway for a successful engagement in 1986 after a run at the Music Center in Los Angeles. You may remember the ads, touting the big production number, “The Lambeth Walk.”

To those of a certain generation, another of the show’s songs may be more familiar: Herman’s Hermits brought the music-hallish “Leaning on the Lamp Post” to the top 10 in 1966.

It’s all jolly good fun, as Bolingbroke might say. Jim Holmes would likely be flattered if he reminded you of Bert, the loose-limbed chimney sweep in “Mary Poppins,” and there are strong supporting performances by Jennifer Beall as Snibson’s back-home girlfriend, Linda Stiegler, Keith Hurt, Gary Saxer and John Dwyer, among others, whose overall enthusiasm under Devery Holmes’ direction nearly compensates for dodgy English accents.

The dancing (it’s the second tap musical, after “Singin’ in the Rain,” to hit Thousand Oaks in a month), choreographed by Linda Squier, is acceptable, and Zach Spencer leads the backstage band. The songs are at least acceptable--a Gilbert & Sullivan pastiche sung by Saxer is a special treat--and the costumes are colorful, even if the producers couldn’t track down authentic pearly king and queen outfits.

DETAILS

“Me and My Girl” continues through May 8 at the Conejo Players theater, 351 S. Moorpark Road in Thousand Oaks. Performances are Thursday-Saturday evenings at 8 and Sunday afternoons at 2:30. Tickets are $10 Thursdays; $12 Fridays and Sundays; and $14 Saturdays. For reservations or more information, call 495-3715.

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ORIGINAL MUSICAL: Marty Flam is an attorney by trade, based in Saticoy and specializing in workers’ compensation. So what’s he doing writing and producing “We Are Here!” a musical retelling of the Jewish experience starting early in World War II and moving from Berlin to Los Angeles to a Christmas Eve climax in Israel?

“It’s a phenomenon,” he said recently. “Somebody called it a creative explosion.”

Flam, whose off-hours activities include leading the 10-year-old Ventura Klezmer Band, came up with the idea while training for last year’s New York Marathon, he says. “While I was running along, the story just developed in my mind,” he said.

The actors include a judge, a couple of cantors, teachers, businesspeople and Ivor Davis, a syndicated journalist who will be seen in roles ranging from a Cockney music-hall singer to Pope Pius XI. “It’s a very ambitious undertaking,” Davis said, “and a lot of effort. [Flam] has enthusiasm running out of every pore.”

Two performances are scheduled for Sunday at Ventura College; Flam says two-thirds of any profits are earmarked for Ventura schools’ ongoing program of taking all west county eighth-graders on a field trip to the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles.

And, he adds, he hopes the musical will be well received and “performed around the world.”

Well, maybe. But, as Davis noted with a combination of amusement and admiration, “if it goes to Broadway, ‘We Are Here!’ will probably cost more than ‘Ragtime’ and ‘Titanic’ combined.”

DETAILS

“We Are Here!” plays Sunday only at the Ventura College Theater, on Loma Vista Road between Day and Ashwood in Ventura. Shows are at 2 and 7 p.m. Tickets are $18; $15, seniors and students. For reservations or more information, call 647-7800.