ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, May 10, 1996 TAG: 9605100032
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By KATHERINE REED STAFF WRITER
As the story goes, Neil Simon wrote the play "Rumors" on a dare from a friend who challenged Simon to write something truly, hysterically funny. The friend apparently thought Simon's writing had taken a turn too hard toward the serious.
So "Rumors" was born, and it truly is an exercise in comedy.
Comedy is hard work anyway, and "Rumors," Mill Mountain Theatre's current main stage production, requires some serious heavy lifting.
The trick is in making it look effortless as the hysteria ebbs and flows from comic crisis to comic crisis in this crazy story about a dinner party gone bad.
And that will be the challenge for the talented cast of this production. It's not that this production, directed by Jere Lee Hodgin, isn't funny. But it's also oddly tedious, in part because of its unvarying pace and overly obvious effort.
The center of the story is a character we never meet, a guy named Charlie Brock - deputy mayor of New York City - who has shot himself through the earlobe in what everyone thinks is a bungled suicide attempt.
The timing's terrible, because Charlie and his mysteriously absent wife Myra have invited a group of friends over for dinner, in celebration of the Brocks' 10th wedding anniversary.
Poor Chris and Ken Gorman (Dina Comolli and Michael Zimmer), who have unfortunately arrived first, are scrambling to cover what they think could be a major scandal for the deputy mayor. But their scrambling - with the help of the next guests, Claire and Lenny Ganz (Dawn A. Westbrook and Mitchell Kantor) - only serves to make matters worse.
And that, of course, means funnier.
By the time the Cusacks (Doug Patterson and Tamara Johnson) and the Coopers (Greg Mitchell and Hillary Brook) arrive, things are so out of hand, it's hard not to pine for Charlie, zonked out on Valium upstairs, to just come down and explain everything and send his stressed-out, injured dinner guests home for a good night's sleep.
It's all a bit like watching someone who's trying awfully hard to be funny; we want only to laugh, not to see how it is we are being made - even begged - to laugh. The mystery is the wonderful core of comedy, the thing that makes us shake our heads in something like puzzlement and awe when we say, "Wow, that was really funny."
Simon's comedies have never been subtle - there isn't much mystery about them. His characters aren't average people; they're wisecrackers, wicked wits with fast brains and faster mouths.
So it's up to the cast to make it all seem possible. Kantor, Comolli and Brook are obviously up to the challenge. They keep cool heads - and retain a firm grip on character - as the mayhem increases.
But this production needs to find its footing and let the laughs happen. When it does, "Rumors" will be well worth seeing.
LENGTH: Medium: 60 lines KEYWORDS: THEATER REVIEWby CNB