|
RUMORS by Neil Simon 3 November to 25 November 2000 Directed by Simone de Haas Cast List Review Implausibly Entertaining Alison Cotes - The Courier Mail - 7 November 2000 This play has six doors (not seven, as I reported when I reviewed it four years ago), four decanters, four luxury cars, one psychiatrist, several lawyers and a couple of politicians, aspiring and actual. There's one case of temporary deafness, one cut arm, one broken nose, one case of whiplash and multiple burnt fingers. It's set in New York, the married couples are like every rich American married couple you've ever met, and the name of the game is Find the Hostess. Sounds familiar? It's a Neil Simon farce, so of course it's familiar, even if you've never seen it before. And even if you have, you probably won't remember the denouement (I certainly didn't), so it's well worth seeing, especially if you're looking for something light, frothy and classy (make mine a lime daiquiri) to cure your post-Brisbane Festival blues. This is the kind of play that Mixed Company does to perfection, the classic drawing-room comedy with middle-class characters who are different enough from us to allow us to despise them, while being close enough to make us just a little uncomfortable. The plots are always improbable, and this one is more improbable than most, to the extent that you almost expect Monty Python's colonel to come on and say "This is all getting extremely silly". But they say something about the way we live now and, therefore, have a subtle moral dimension that is, thankfully, quite unobtrusive in performance but gives the plays an edge that lifts them above the banal. Here we're talking attorneys with nicotine withdrawal and alcohol problems (Dale Murison is getting rather too good at this kind of role), psychiatrists who need to heal themselves (Brian Hinselwood, ditto), wealthy tennis club gossips (Debra Chalmers, are you being typecast?), gormless company lawyers (Brad Ashwood, can this be you?), and all the usual suspects. The company is getting so good at this kind of thing that they're practically flawless, but this year they have a new talent in the form of Vinnie Monaco, an import from the USA, who does the good cop/bad cop routine so well that he could be straight out of television's NYPD. So you want to know the story? I'll tell you anyway. Four couples are invited to the 10th wedding anniversary party of the deputy mayor of New York and his wife. But when the first couple arrive, the host has shot himself in the earlobe and the hostess is nowhere to be found, so it's decided to cover up the whole episode and go ahead with the party. After that, if you can't follow the plot, don't let it get you down, because there's enough zany behaviour and clever Neil Simon dialogue to keep you amused for two hours, and if you aren't willing to suspend your disbelief you shouldn't have come in the first place. Rumors is trivial, forgettable, but eminently enjoyable. The author knows how to take the Mickey, even out of himself -- "There's no logic, and nothing in this story is plausible," says one of the characters--but who cares? |
