Neil Simon's 75th birthday celebration is finally coming to an end, and not a moment too soon. Many of his best works are staples that entertain theater audiences with witty dialogue and sharply drawn urban characters. However, local theater companies have indulged in...

STAR SPANGLED TO DEATH Directed by Ken Jacobs October 19, Walter Reade Witnessing an underdog's personal, uncontrolled fantasy The ultimate underground movie, Star Spangled to Death, Ken Jacobs's epic, bargain-basement assemblage, annotates a lyrical junkyard allegory with chunks of mainly '30s American movies-or...

Neil Simon has developed a notable gift for light and amusing comedies that possess a kind of ingratiating charm of their own. His latest play, "The Star-Spangled Girl,"… lacks something of the brilliantly expert artifice that marked "Barefoot in the Park" and "The Odd Couple," but it is brightened by enough of his humorous and often witty inventiveness to provide an engagingly entertaining theatrical evening. Here he has gone in for the basic situation of tw...

[If] one boisterously clever first act could make a hit, then the term would apply to Neil Simon's "The Star-Spangled Girl."… But for a hit you need a strong second act and a zinger of a third act, and Simon hasn't come forth with either. I don't mean that he lets his audience down entirely; there are laughs intermittently to the finish, and you could do far worse for a light evening out. What we miss is new material after that first act. We want the three character...