The Peterborough Theatre Guild returns to the stage in November with the second full production of its 2022-23 season: Neil Simon’s hilarious two-act play Rumors.
Premiering in September 1988 at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego, California before opening on Broadway the following month, Rumors was a departure for Simon.
While the American playwright, screenwriter, and author had already written many well-known comedic plays — including Barefoot in the Park (1963), The Odd Couple (1965), The Sunshine Boys (1972), Brighton Beach Memoirs (1983), Biloxi Blues (1985), and Broadway Bound (1986) — Rumors was his first farce.
Simon wrote the Tony award-winning Rumors during a challenging time in his life — his marriage was breaking up and his son-in-law had been killed in a car accident — when he needed to distract himself.
“I wanted to work, because work is always a cathartic process for me, and I thought it would be really good just to get into a comedy,” he said in a 1988 interview with The New York Times. “This is completely different for me. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever written.”
Rumors begins with well-to-do couple Ken and Chris Gorman the first to arrive at a 10th-anniversary celebration party for New York City’s deputy mayor Charlie Brock and his wife Myra at their upscale Victorian home north of the city. The Gormans discover the deputy mayor in bed wounded from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, and Myra and the servants nowhere to be found.
Since Ken is Charlie’s lawyer, and fearing a marital or political scandal, he attempts to keep the other arriving couples in the dark as rumours swirl about what is going on. Things get even more complicated when the police arrive.
“A farce is relentless,” Simon said. “There are so many more obligations. It’s relentless in its needs for plot twists, and to keep the comedy going. I thought I’d see how far I could go with this thing, because it deals with a great deal of plot. And I rarely use plot. I use character development.”
“In all other stories, the characters just seem to move to the next place, as life would have them move. But in the plot in a farce, you move them. The writer’s in control all the way. The simplest aspect of farce is you need a lot of doors. And you need people to go running in and out of them, just missing each other. Generally speaking, in a farce people are trying to withhold information from other people.”
The Peterborough Theatre Guild’s production of Rumors, directed by Chris Lee and produced by Margaret Pieper, will feature local actors Laura Kennedy, Seamus McCann, Chris Ratz, Tristina Haines, Kyle Robertson, Vikki Bell, Darryl Mitchell, Laura Lawson, David Geene, and Kaylin Aylward.
The play runs for 10 performances from Friday, November 4th to Saturday, November 19th at the Guild hall (364 Rogers Street, Peterborough), with evening performances at 7:30 p.m. on November 4 and 5, 10 to 12, and 17 to 19, and 2 p.m. matinee performances on November 6 and 13.
Tickets for assigned seating are $25 ($22 for seniors and $15 for students) are available by calling the box office anytime at 705-745-4211 (leave a message if the box office is not open) or online at peterboroughtheatreguild.com.
kawarthaNOW is proud to be a media sponsor of the Peterborough Theatre Guild’s 2022-23 season.
