Rumors in Pacifica

June 25, 11:43 PMSF Community Theater ExaminerJim Strope

Previous Next

Comment Print Email RSS Subscribe

Subscribe

Get alerts when there is a new article from the SF Community Theater Examiner. Read Examiner.com's terms of use.

Email Address   Include other special offers from Examiner.com Terms of Use

Pacifica Spindrift Players proves that nobody really needs to knows anything in Neil Simon's comedy. 
A scandal occurs in an off-stage bedroom and the early party goers must keep it from the later arrivals.  Appearances must be kept up at all cost.  Stories are refined, repeated, reinvented, merged, and abandoned for new tales.  Out of politeness, they try to believe but eventually no one can believe anything, which is funny in a comedy.  The amused audience wises up faster than the characters, which makes them amusing. 

Director John Hull's characteristic style of storytelling is energized by plenty of physical drama.  Characters are perpetually moving, walking and talking, laughing or scowling, seducing or rejecting, lying, flattering, conspiring, grimacing, threatening, leaning, throwing up hands, standing up or sitting down, turning away, leaving or entering or crawling on hands and knees.  No one is ever still.   The number of characters on stage changes constantly with much slamming of doors. 

And no one really knows anything, least of all the cops who are determined to get the facts.  It's not the chaos of individualism but the chaos of individual couples who try to support each other, more or less at the expense of other couples.  It’s a pleasure to watch actors who work so well together.  Simon’s clever and punny script feeds their split-second timing and hilarious physical comedy. 

Marte Mejstrik’s cynical Lenny Ganz threatens to steal the show with his asides and a major monologue that climaxes the play.  Joan Pugh Newman plays Claire Ganz, a capable woman in a constant fencing match with her wisecracking husband. 

Christa Jensen and John Lakian play the youngest keepers of the secret.  Their high frequency angst and thin deceptions amplify the dramatic intensity. 

Maria Fagan plays a neurotically dangerous woman who succeeds in being everyone’s problem.  She brings to the play a touching suggestion of depth ironically covered by her superficial desires for beauty and social success.  

Glittering costumes by Maria Graham bring the production solidly into the upper class. 

Spindrift has done a terrific job on this excellent play.  It's funny, fast-paced, thoughtful, and tinted with bits of post-modern seriousness between comic reliefs.  

Rumors plays until July 19th.  The theatre has a pleasant community flavor and is located in a lovely park in the hills above Pacifica. 

http://www.pacificaspindriftplayers.org/