About the Play:

Rumors has long been a favourite of acting teachers for Female Monologues.

Rumors is a full-length comedy by Neil Simon. In this murderous farce, four couples arrive at the 10th anniversary celebration party for New York's deputy mayor and his wife, only to find the mayor wounded in bed and the wife missing! The other guests lie and spread rumours. But what is the truth? This zany comedy from one of America's best-loved playwrights is a wild stew of ridiculously hilarious complications that will have your audience laughing out loud.

Rumors - one of the most popular stage farces of the late 20th century - is a botched murder mystery comedy! The action takes place at a dinner party where just about everything goes awry. It is Charley and Myra Brock's 10th anniversary and the first couple to arrive find Myra missing, no kitchen staff, and Charlie has shot himself in the head – but he only shot his earlobe due to passing out from the Valium. From there the evening gets even more chaotic. Charley is the deputy Mayor of New York City. The first guests, Ken, a lawyer and his wife Chris, determine that to protect Charley's reputation, whatever has happened needs to be covered up. A second couple arrives and manages to get the scoop out of Ken and Chris. But since Charley is still incoherent, they can only guess at what has actually happened – based on current gossip circulating at their tennis club. But the truth can't compare with "rumours".... Comic complications arise when, given everyone’s upper class status, they decide they need to do everything possible to conceal the evening’s events from the local police and the media. As more guests arrive excuses for the missing hosts and lack of staff become ever more convoluted, and as various rumours about who might be having an affair mount, the evening spins off into classic farcical hilarity.

Rumors had a pre-Broadway engagement in 1988 at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego, California. It premiered later that same year at the Broadhurst Theatre and ran for nearly a year on Broadway. Since then it has been consistently delighting audiences, and has become a staple of community theatres, regional repertory houses, colleges, and high schools.

Cast: 5 female, 5 male

What people say:

"Light, frothy and fun." — New York Post

"Has nothing on its mind except making the audience laugh." — New York Times

"Neil Simon makes people laugh — a lot." — USA Today

"Not only side splitting, but front and back splitting." — NBC-TV

Neil Simon (1927-2018) was America's most prolific playwright. He had dozens of plays and nearly as many major motion pictures produced. He was showered with more Academy and Tony nominations than any other writer, and is the only playwright to have four Broadway productions running simultaneously. His plays have been produced in dozens of languages, and in 1983 became the only living playwright to have a New York theatre, the Neil Simon Theatre, named in his honour. His true success, however, is in his unique way of exposing something real in the American spirit.