He is the creator of “Barefoot in the Park,” “The Odd Couple,” “Brighton Beach Memoirs,” and “Lost in Yonkers,” among many other Broadway and screen productions. Over the span of four decades, Neil Simon’s flawed-but-human, zany characters have made him one of the world’s most awarded and successful playwrights and screenwriters.
Simon’s “The Star-Spangled Girl,” a romantic comedy, will be presented at 7:30 p.m. Thursday and Friday in Backus Auditorium, under the direction of Nancy McBride.
McBride is a Littlefork-Big Falls English teacher and drama coach, and the production is presented as Littlefork Community Theater because the cast is comprised of L-BF alumni actors.
Pulitzer winner Simon is best known for his ability to create humor from the lives and troubles of everyday people. Actor Jack Lemon said that Simon’s characters are human beings first. “They are not all bad or all good; they are people we know.”
The characters of the locally produced Star-spangled Girl are portrayed by Sarah Antonies, John Winkel and Craig Kennedy. Even though the cast is comprised of three characters, the plot as it unfolds reveals a quadrangle love affair, McBride said.
The year is 1966. Two guys go off to college together and decide to produce a protest magazine. “This is standard fare for 1966,” McBride told The Journal, adding that her real-life sister, Diane Berg Kuykendall, was in college that year and her Smith Corona typewriter has become part of the set.
The college students are starving artists when a flag-waving female from an Olympic swim team moves into the room next door. An unlikely attraction, one of the males falls in love with the girl who is already in love with a real-live “First Lieutenant of the United States Marine Corp.”
So the star-spangled girl holds disdain for her college neighbors who she says are blackening the good name of America. She even calls one a traitor, McBride said, although both men have been servicemen. The plot solidifies.
And in usual Neil Simon style, there will be irony; there will be humanity.
“Even though it’s 1966, it really is pretty current,” McBride noted. “The beauty of America is that we can protest when we think something is wrong.”
McBride has produced Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” four times in Littlefork with community players, and will be right back at Backus on July 29 with Rock the Border, a 90-minute variety show of local talent. Following that, she will direct a production of “On Golden Pond” which will play at Backus on Aug. 13 and 14. Watch for further details.
“It’s exciting to get some theater back on the Backus stage,” McBride said. Where she once had to scramble to assemble enough players, she is now having to turn people down, she said.
Tickets in advance at City Drug, Backus Office in the Falls, Betty’s in Fort Frances are $10, adults; $5, students; and $25 for a family. Tickets at the door are $12, adults; $6 students; and $30 for a family.
Refreshments will be available at intermission.
If you go:
WHAT: “The Star-spangled Girl,” a Neil Simon play presented by the Littlefork Community Theater
WHEN: 7:30 p.m. Thursday and Friday
WHERE: Backus Community Center
COST: Tickets in advance at City Drug and the Backus Office in the Falls,and Betty’s in Fort Frances: $10, adults; $5, students; $25, family.
Tickets at the door: $12, adults; $6 students; $30, family.
