STAGE REVIEW : Simon’s ‘Rumors’ Running Rampant

Depending on which page you consult in the program, Ron Leibman is either playing Lenny Ganz or Lenny Fox in Neil Simon’s new play at the Old Globe Theatre, “Rumors.”

This suggests that “Rumors” is slightly in a state of flux. (It is supposed to open on Broadway in November.) Another sign is the way the characters keep stopping in order to review the plot, exactly like actors who have lost their place. Where are we now, again?

Things do get pretty complicated. The scene is a creamy house in what New Yorkers call “the country.” Charlie and Myra have invited some friends over to help them celebrate their 10th anniversary.

(“Friends” meaning Charlie and Myra’s tax man, their lawyer, their psychiatrist, a man who may do them some good in the State Assembly, and so on. Their doctor is at “Phantom of the Opera,” but he keeps checking in by phone.)

But when the friends arrive, in their tuxedos and above-the-knee dresses, the smoked turkey hasn’t been sliced and Charlie and Myra aren’t around.

Half an hour later, guns are going off, doors are banging, pots are exploding in the kitchen and people’s backs are going into spasms--to say nothing of their marriages.

In other words, “Rumors” is a farce. And not Simon’s first one. Remember the bride who wouldn’t come out of the bathroom in “Plaza Suite”? Or the guy who woke up next to a woman who wasn’t his wife in “California Suite”?

But those were one-acts. “Rumors” tries to go the full distance, and it makes a very fast start, with Leibman (the tax man) limping into the house with a whiplash injury and Christine Baranski (the lawyer’s wife) viciously resuming her cigarette habit as the news from upstairs gets more and more baleful.

Meanwhile, everyone is madly pretending that things are fine and that Charlie and Myra will be right down. At first the viewer--this one, at least--finds himself laughing his head off. There’s nothing funnier than a disastrous party, when it isn’t yours. And “Rumors” doesn’t expect us to identify with these people, as Simon’s autobiographical plays do. So we can laugh at them in good conscience.

But by the end of the play we are laughing in order to help Gene Saks’ superior cast get to the finish line, which isn’t the rhythm that farce wants at all. How come?

Simon has been cranking rewrites out like a Fax machine, and may have solved the problem even as we speak. An outside opinion is that “Rumors” doesn’t need more jokes and doesn’t need more warmth. It’s a strength that Charlie and Myra’s friends are basically jerks.

But the play does need a better excuse for all that running around. We understood why the father in “Plaza Suite” needed to get his daughter out of the bathroom with everybody gathered for the wedding. We understood why the guy in “California Suite” needed to get the woman out of his bed with his wife coming up in the elevator.

But we do not understand why it’s absolutely crucial to keep Charlie’s friends from finding out what has happened to him and Myra. Without tipping Simon’s plot, it can be revealed that it involves a suicide attempt on somebody’s part. When was the last time anyone went to jail for this? When was the last time anyone’s friends went to jail for seeming to abet it?

But from the to-do here, you’d think that Charlie’s friends were trying to cover up a murder. Simon’s point may be that hysterical people in a certain tax bracket can make a crisis out of anything, but the problem seems increasingly specious as the evening goes on, and more and more characters come into Charlie’s secret.

Meanwhile, Simon and Saks keep throwing in riffs and sight gags, anything to keep the pot boiling. For instance, there’s a gag about how the men are named Glenn, Len and Ken, to which the policeman in the room (there is now a policeman) adds that his name is Ben.

Pretty desperate. The nadir comes when Leibman has to explain the situation to the policeman (Charles Brown) and launches on a wild improvisation that the policeman doesn’t believe, but agrees to “buy,” because he likes it. Farce needs sterner margins than this if it’s to implode.

Yet it is a Neil Simon play, and good stuff turns up as well--a gem of a scene, for instance, between Ken Howard as the would-be assemblyman and Lisa Banes as his wife. Neither of them can say one word without the other going up the wall, yet each wants, someplace, to communicate. Nifty writing, nifty acting.

Nifty acting all around. As desperate as they may feel about some of this material, Saks’ actors make the desperation work for them--Leibman spouting his nonsense, Baranski snuffing her cigarettes, Jessica Walter sizing up everybody else’s dress, Andre Gregory trying to maintain the calm that he does in his Group Therapy sessions, Joyce Van Patten trying to keep her back from going out again, and Mark Nelson trying to get his ears to pop.

Dying, an old actor once said, is easy. Comedy is hard. And farce damn near impossible, when the mainspring hasn’t been properly wound. This gang almost makes “Rumors” into a fact. As for the writing, there’s work to do.

Plays at 8 p.m. Tuesdays-Sundays, with 2 p.m. matinees Saturdays-Sundays. Tickets $17-$24. Closes Oct. 29. Balboa Park, San Diego. (619) 239-2255.