Unloved Child

Neil Simon confesses in his autobiography that he never liked “The Star Spangled Girl.” He didn’t like it when he was writing it; he didn’t like it when it opened on Broadway, despite the generally favorable reviews it received. (Also on Broadway at the same time were “The Odd Couple,” “Barefoot in the Park” and the musical “Sweet Charity,” making Simon the first playwright since the ‘20s with four shows running simultaneously.)

You might like “Star Spangled Girl”--now playing at the Simi Valley Cultural Arts Center--just fine, though; and if you do, it won’t be the first time an artist proved to be a poor judge of his own work.

The locale is San Francisco just before the Summer of Love, though you’d never know it from Simon’s nondescript scene-setting (he’d never been to the city before writing the play, and he probably didn’t have an idea what young people were up to, even when he was a young person).

Andy Hobart is publisher of a small, struggling, Ramparts-like left-wing magazine; his roommate, Norman Cornell, is the publication’s writer.

Into their lives comes a new next-door neighbor, a cornfed Midwestern transplant with the unlikely name of Sophie Rauchmeyer, whose politics are very much more conservative than the men’s. Hilarity ensues.

Simon says he was inspired to write the play when he saw a middle-aged man and woman take one another on, politically, at a party; he likens them to James Carville and Mary Matalin, who came along much later and, of course, married despite working on different sides of the political fence.

Simon’s reservations and lack of familiarity with the surroundings notwithstanding, the play has some funny lines and situations, and the current production is given an extra boost by Travis Miller’s direction and the solid cast of Robert Arbogast as the relatively smooth Andy, Will Shupe as frazzled and love-struck Norman and Sara Stuckey as Sophie. (Shupe, who makes good use of his gift for physical comedy, and Stuckey were featured in a recent local production of Woody Allen’s “Play It Again, Sam.”)

To those keeping count, this is the third Neil Simon play to be produced locally since April; a fourth, “I Ought to Be in Pictures,” opens later this month at Camarillo’s Marquie Dinner Theatre.

With more careful coordination, they all could have been playing simultaneously.

DETAILS

“The Star Spangled Girl” continues Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. through June 11 at the Simi Valley Cultural Arts Center, 3050 Los Angeles Ave. Tickets to all shows are $16; $14, seniors and students; and $10, children 10 and under. For reservations or further information, call 581-9940.

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On Saturday, the Conejo Players will hold a gathering of cowboy poets and western-style singers and songwriters as a fund-raiser for the theater. Producing the event is Marianne Robertson, a longtime Conejo Player, as is her husband, Gary.

Manager of a ranch in Hidden Valley, Gary Robertson is also a cowboy and a cowboy poet in his own right. “One night, Johnny Carson had some people from [the annual cowboy poetry festival in] Elko, Nev., on,” Marianne recalled. “Gary and I just sat there, saying ‘Oh, my gosh--this stuff is neat!’ It was funny and it was touching, and it was entertaining.”

Gary Robertson made his debut at Elko some years later.

“The man who owns the ranch took him up there,” Marianne said, “ . . . and told Gary it was about time he stopped talking about doing cowboy poetry and actually perform.”

After stepping up at one of the festival’s open-microphone competitions, Robertson decided to pursue the craft seriously.

Most of the poets performing Saturday are from California, but at least one is coming in from Silver City, N.M., and a poet from Australia performed in an earlier version of the show.

Not all of Saturday’s poets are full-time cowboys, though. Michael Bradbury, whose poetry has been featured in the Western Horseman calendar, is Ventura County’s district attorney.

DETAILS

The Third Annual Cowboy Poetry and Western Music Event will be held Saturday at the Conejo Players Theater, 351 S. Moorpark Road in Thousand Oaks. The first show is at 3 p.m. and tickets are $15; the second, substantially different, show is at 8 p.m. and tickets are $17. There will be a buffet barbecue outdoors at 6 p.m. for $10. An all-day package, which includes both shows and the dinner, is available for $40. For reservations or further information, call 495-3715.

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Todd Everett can be reached at teverett@concentric.net.