In many ways Neil Simon's "I Ought to Be in Pictures" … is a fantasy play. It presumes that a daughter who was abandoned by her father at the age of 3 can establish a close relationship with him, speak more candidly, manage to convey all the inner warmth daughters who have lived with their fathers all their lives cannot. But the theater, after all, is a place where wishes are fulfilled, and the play is set in Los Angeles, which everyone knows is not a real place—so it is not at all hard to suspend disbelief and accept the play for what it is, the most genuinely touching play Simon has written, one in which laughs stem from character, one in which the master yocksmith is not afraid to trust his emotions.

"I Ought to Be in Pictures" is as full of tenderness as it is of humor...