'Rumors' provides nonstop laughs

Don't let the name fool you: "Rumors" is really more about lies (some might say little white ones) than it is about rumors.

But the rumors do get the action started, and what follows is an hour-and-a-half, two-act farce that, in typical Neil Simon style, produces pretty much nonstop laughs. "Rumors" is an adult comedy, but not vulgar by any means (again, typical Simon style), and the students in Central High School's Red Dagger theater troupe handle the comedy well.

Where most of Simon's comedies are more subtle, full of humor that almost flies under the radar (think "The Odd Couple" and "Barefoot in the Park"), "Rumors" doesn't even pretend to be subtle. In farce style, the comedy is often physical, always in-your-face -- a general comedy romp.

The play starts off at the New York home of the well-to-do deputy mayor and his wife, who never appear in the play. The occasion is the night of their 10th wedding anniversary, but everything has gone wrong. The deputy mayor has shot himself through the ear lobe, his wife and servants are nowhere to be found. His friends, guests at the dinner party, are left to try to save the deputy mayor's reputation from what looks like a suicide attempt. In the course of the attempt they weave an intricate and humorous web of lies, first to fool each other, then to fool the police.

The ensemble cast put together by director Cynthia Bradshaw handles the fast-paced humor adeptly. Even as an audience member there's barely time to breathe with all the action on the stage, but the young actors don't miss a step. Each of them make the quirky, rich, reputation obsessed characters shine through.

Trevor Camp and Taylor McMillan play Ken and Chris Gorman, the first couple to the party, a bumbling lawyer and his ultra-anxious wife. Zach Reeves and Suzanne Burke portray Lenny and Clair Ganz, a smart-mouthed accountant and his rumor- and status-obsessed wife. Heath Daniel and Annette Hammond get to play the true eccentrics, the psychiatrist Ernie Cusack and his cooking-show-host wife Cooke. Kevin Schenkelberg comes off authentic as the ultra-image-conscious politician Glenn Cooper while Emily Ponder nails the part of his paranoid wife, Cassie, who is convinced Glenn is sleeping around on her.

Allie Wolz and Beth Davey make brief appearance during the play's climax as the cops the partygoers are trying so hard to dupe.

"Rumors" is exactly the kind of high school play that should be a big hit: funny without being trite, always entertaining and, in the end, extremely surprising (in a good way). The same could have been said about Red Dagger's two-act "Odd Couple" two springs ago.

Clearly, Central High School scores big with Neil Simon, and not just because his plays are funny no matter what. Red Dagger handles this production of "Rumors" with nary a hitch.

msanders@semissourian.com

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