‘Rumors’ a colorful comedy

By Thom deMartino/Orange County Tribune

It’s my party, and I’ll die if I want to. (Or accidentally shoot myself in the earlobe, anyway.)

Now playing at the Westminster Community Playhouse is the Neil Simon comedy “Rumors”. Directed by Autumn Browne, the story revolves around the 10-year anniversary party of Charley Brock, New York City’s Deputy Mayor, and his wife Myra: she’s nowhere to be found, and he’s in an upstairs room with a gunshot wound.

The audience is introduced to Ken Gorman (Philip Brickey), who has discovered the wounded Charley upstairs, and his wife Chris (Stacy Castiglione) – as the first guests to the would-be party, they’ve stumbled onto the untoward situation, and Ken – a lawyer, by trade – wants to keep the situation quiet, so as not to compromise his friend’s career.

It’s only a flesh wound, as it turns out, as the Deputy Mayor fell asleep with a gun in his hand that accidentally went off. Ken and Chris are determined to keep this information under wraps, whether it be phoning a doctor or briefing the arriving guests – saying Charley fell and hit his head.

The next friends to arrive for the anniversary party are Lenny and Claire Gantz (Bobby D. Lux and Laura Lejuwaan), with the former lamenting their car accident with a BMW that occurred earlier in the evening, leaving Lenny bemoaning his painful neck injury.

The two couples begin comparing notes, rumors about the anniversary pair that they’ve heard: one was having an affair? The other? Both!? When Ken spills the beans about Charley’s injury, the group is split on whether or not to call the police — just as another guest car arrives.

Enter empathetic psychologist Ernie Cusack (Neil Switzer) and his idiosyncratic wife Cookie (Susan Levinstein), whose painful back spasms leave her sporadically doubled over in pain. Not being privy to the earlier events, the pair is kept out of the loop by the rest of the group as the final guests arrive: politician Glenn Cooper (Grant Beach), accompanied by his wife Cassie (Chey’Anne Harris). Almost immediately their own contentious relationship takes center stage as the rest of the group stalls and tries to keep them, too, in the dark.

What’s the true story? Will anyone come clean about what’s really going on, or will they continue to project and spin?

As with most work of the great Neil Simon, this is a fast-paced production with rapid-fire dialogue, deftly performed by the Westminster Community Playhouse players and delivering lots of laughs in the process.

Excellent performances abound all around, whether it be Brickey as the manic Ken, Castiglione as the long-suffering Chris, Lejuwaan as foil to Lux’s amusing Lenny, Switzer’s charming Ernie and Levinstein’s comedic Cookie, to the dry arrogance of Beach’s Glenn or the moxy of Harris’s vivacious Cassie. (Also of note are the colorful cameos by Tevin C. Phelps as Officer Welch and Benjamin Rasmussen as the goofy Officer Pudney.)

It’s a fun and frenetic foray into the extended games of telephone we play, the assumptions we make, and the tall tales we spin ourselves, in the absence of the truth. Another solid production from the talented WCP troupe, “Rumors” is a fabulous laugh-out-loud comedy to heartily enjoy.

“Rumors.” Stacy Castiglione, Philip Brickey and Laura Lejuwaan star in this colorful Westminster Community Playhouse production of a Neil Simon classic. Now playing through Sept. 22 at the Westminster Community Playhouse, 7272 Maple St, Westminster. Ticketing information available online at http://www.wcpstage.com, or call (714) 893-8626. Some mature language.