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“Rumors” — Neil Simon’s send-up of the murder mystery genre, is showing at Youngstown Cultural Arts Center as per the card below:
Youngstown is at 4408 Delridge Way SW
See the full info on the Blog Home Page.
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I attended the opening show Friday evening, courtesy of West Seattle’s Twelfth Night Productions, who, hearing of my awesome ability to sway public opinion, tried to bribe me with a pair of free tickets.
(Pssst! It worked!)
I won’t spoil the plot for you on this one. In fact, I don’t think I could if I wanted to. It all happened so fast, I’m still not sure whodunnit. Or what exactly was the it they dun did.
There was some gratuitous cussing, though. I’ll tell you that much.
And there was violence. Albeit implied. Cheesily so.
There was a cop who reminded me very much of Bill Murray. And a politician who reminded of . . . well . . . a politician.
But mostly there was farce, as conceived by playwright Simon and crystallized* by an endearing crew of fun-loving, scenery-chewing locals.
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Neil Simon must’ve written this play as a love offering to small theatre companies. It’s simple enough so that it can be done passably by your local high-school drama club, yet subtle enough to offer possibilities for actors wishing to seriously invest themselves in the characters.
I think Twelfth Night has done an honorable job staging this play, and I credit all the actors with doing their best with the material. I must confess that I’m not big fan of the theatre. The freneticism of the actors and the closeness of the stage tend to put me off. Which is why I have to give extra credit points to this particular crew. Yes, I felt slightly on edge for the first half hour, as character after character came bursting through the door with a hokey new plot twist. After the initial thunderclaps had passed, though, I started to warm to the characters and felt at ease, free to laugh along with the rest of the audience at the dopey situations and pratfalls.
Of course, with any story, told in any medium, there’s always that initial hump of believability and interest to be surmounted. But this is precisely why playwrights and local theatre groups have to be so much better than their TV colleagues (and also precisely why we should ALL go see an amateur play now and again).
Unlike TV producers, small, local theatre groups don’t have millions of bucks to sink into props and sets and computer animated sequences. They also don’t have the luxury of a whole season in which to develop their characters. And they DON’T have recourse to a laugh-track if the jokes fall flat. As a result, the locals try harder. And they put their hearts into it. —Which is why so much of what’s “live and local” is so much better, in my opinion, than the dead, canned dreck one so often encounters on television.
But I regress . . . Where was I? Oh yes.
In keeping with its satiric, low-budget motif, “Rumors” doesn’t hesitate to lunge for a gag now and again. But don’t make the mistake of thinking Neil Simon (or Twelfth Night) has dumbed
anything down on us. It’s still a very artfully conceived and executed play. And if you’d rather sit there analyzing plot twists or deconstructing pop-culture jokes instead of laughing, no one would think the worse of you for it.
On second thought, nope. I take that back.
You’d be dumb if you didn’t laugh at the jokes.
(More info on Twelfth Night Productions to follow. Maybe. Depends on how much is left in the “Bribes” fund.)
–David Preston
*That’s a clew. Sort of.
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