Produced by The Public Theatre
April, 2001

A STUDY GUIDE
Prepared by
Martin Andrucki
Professor of Theater, Bates College

The Public Theatre and Professor Martin Andrucki
own all rights to this Study Guide.
 

I.  THE PLAYWRIGHT

Neil Simon is America's best-known living playwright and possibly the most financially successful dramatist of all time.  Beginning with Come Blow Your Horn in 1961, Simon has written a long succession of Broadway hit comedies which have earned him huge audiences and numerous prizes, including four Tony Awards, the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, and the Pulitzer Prize.  In 1966, Simon had four plays running simultaneously on Broadway, the only author in modern times to accomplish such a feat.

Among his better known plays are Barefoot in the Park (1963), The Odd Couple (1965), The Prisoner of Second Avenue (1971), The Sunshine Boys (1972), and Broadway Bound (1986).

In addition to his work for the stage, Simon has written the screenplays for more than twenty movies--many of which have been adaptations of his own plays--and has won Emmy Awards for his writing for such television comedians as Sid Caesar, Phil Silvers, Jackie Gleason, and Jerry Lewis.

Simon's life is a textbook case of the American success story.  The grandson of Jewish immigrants and the second of two sons, Simon was born into a lower-middle class family in The Bronx in 1927.  His father, Irving, was a salesman in the garment industry, and his mother, Mamie, was a housewife.  Life in the Simon family during the Depression years of the 1930s was marked by frequent troubles, emotional and financial, caused by Irving's periodic abandonment of his wife and children.  Left to fend for themselves, the family took in lodgers, providing room and board for strangers in order to make up for the lost income of the absent father.

Simon found escape from his family woes at the movies, especially in the films of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and Laurel and Hardy.  It was the exhilaration and solace provided by these comedians that pointed Simon toward his ultimate goal as a playwright, which he has defined as the desire "to make a whole audience fall onto the floor, writhing and laughing so hard that some of them pass out."

The road to that goal led through DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx, from which Simon graduated in 1943 at age sixteen.  Following his high school years he went to work in the garment district in New York, employed, in his words, in "lifting heavy things."  In 1945, toward the end of World War II, Simon left the garment business and entered the Army Air Force, spending a year and a half in Biloxi, Mississippi and Denver, Colorado.  According to the author the play, Biloxi Blues, grew out of this experience.

As part of his training for the Air Force, Simon studied engineering for a year at New York University—the only higher education he ever received.  He has often felt embarrassed by his lack of a college degree, especially in a field populated by highly-educated writers and artists--a situation he compares to "being in a room where everybody speaks French but you."

In 1946, Simon went to work in the mail-room of the New York office of Warner Brothers, the Hollywood studio, joining his older brother, Danny, who was employed there in the publicity department.  By this time, Neil and Danny had begun working together as a comedy writing team, creating sketches for amateur performances put on by employees of a New York department store.  On the alert for professional opportunities, they learned that a well-known producer at CBS, Goodman Ace, was scouting new comedy-writing talent.  They presented themselves to Ace, who challenged them to produce a sketch funny enough to be broadcast on one of CBS's successful radio programs.  In response, they created a monologue by an imaginary Brooklyn usherette describing Joan Crawford in a typical Hollywood tearjerker: "She's in love with a gangster who is caught and sent to Sing Sing and given the electric chair and she promises to wait for him."  The sketch was a hit with Ace, and the Simon brothers were put to work writing for Robert Q. Lewis, a major radio personality who was later to become a success in the early years of television.

Neil and Danny continued working together in radio and television, while also writing material for musical reviews on Broadway and at resort hotels in the Catskill Mountains, known as the "Borscht Circuit."  (Borscht is a kind of soup made from beefstock and beets which was popular among the mostly Jewish patrons of these hotels.)  By 1956, Danny decided to move to California to pursue a career as a director.  Neil remained in New York, writing for "Your Show of Shows," a weekly comedy review starring Sid Caesar and Imogene Cocoa that has come to be recognized as a classic of television's "golden age."

In 1958, Simon started working on the script that was to become his first full-length play, Come Blow Your Horn.  Produced finally in 1961, the play contains a strong autobiographical element.  "I knew that you should write about what you know," Simon has said of this play.  "I figured, OK, I know my family, so I'll do something about how my older brother Danny and I left home and took our first apartment."

Later plays by Simon have also employed autobiographical themes and situations.  Following the death of his first wife, Joan, and his remarriage to the actress, Marsha Mason, Simon wrote Chapter Two (1977), a play that deals with the problems of beginning a new life with a different mate.  Starting in the mid-eighties, he embarked on what was to become a series of self-portraits focusing on the crucial problems and events of his life. Brighton Beach Memoirs (1983) looks back at family tensions during the Depression, while Broadway Bound (1986) examines a major turning point in the life of a young writer who bears a strong resemblence to Neil Simon.  Biloxi Blues (1985), as we have seen, deals with the playwright's life in the military, while Jake's Women (1992) once again grapples with the difficulty of accepting his first wife's death.  Simon explores the experiences of his early professional life in Laughter on the 23rd Floor (1993) which recaptures the hilarity of his years as a writer for Sid Caesar.

Rumors, Simon’s 23rd play, which has been called “the first no-holds-barred farce of his career,” opened in New York in 1988 and ran for 531 performances, closing in 1990.

II.  THE SETTING

The play takes place in the home of Charley and Myra Brock on the evening of their tenth wedding anniversary.  The Brocks live in Sneden’s Landing, a wealthy suburb of New York located in Rockland County on the west bank of the Hudson River, “about forty minutes from the city.”  Theirs is a “large, tastefully renovated, Victorian house…Despite its age and gingerbread exterior, the interior is modern, monochromatic and sparkling clean.  A nice combination.”  Among the furnishings are a “mirror with an ornate frame,” “a gorgeous cabinet,” and “a well-stocked bar”—an array of luxurious objects denoting wealth and comfort.

Since at least the time of Moliere, such handsome, well-appointed, upper middle-class environments have provided the settings for farce:  places like the nouveau-riche manor of The Bourgeois Gentilhomme, the swank Paris hotels of Feydeau, the classy London flats and townhouses of Noel Coward, or the luxury liner on which the Marx Brothers wreak havoc.  Why such handsome digs for such nonsensical goings on?  The answer would seem to lie in the logic of contradiction.  People create impressive surroundings to convince themselves and others that they are paragons of dignity, while farce reveals that we are all monkeys under the skin.  And as everyone knows, it’s more fun to watch monkeys tearing up a deluxe Victorian mansion than a cage at the city zoo.

Thus, in Rumors, Neil Simon places us square in the lap of American luxury, among rich lawyers, doctors, accountants, and politicians—people gathered to celebrate ten years of marriage, with all that such a milestone represents in the way of maturity, virtue, and respectability.  Which, of course, provides the perfect opportunity for farce to do its work—to  demonstrate that lurking within this comfortable world are the comic demons of  irresponsibility, petty vice, and shamelessness.

III.  THE PLOT

We begin in the middle of a crisis.  Chris and Ken Gorman, the first guests to arrive for the anniversary party at Charley and Myra’s house, find the servants absent, Myra missing, and Charlie with a bullet hole in his ear.  The rest of the play is a long and lunatic attempt by the successively arriving guests to figure out—and deal with—this baffling set of facts.

The situation is especially incendiary because Charlie Brock is deputy mayor of New York, and thus vulnerable to scandal.  And it looks like something pretty scandalous has happened in his house.  But what, exactly?  Marital violence?  Attempted murder?  A failed suicide?  All of the apparent possibilities are unsavory, and all potentially destructive for Charley’s career.  But not only Charley’s.  Attempted suicide being a crime, and Ken being a lawyer, he is professionally obligated to notify the police.  If he fails to do so, he risks ruin himself.  His own career, or his friend’s—which will Ken risk in the face of this bizarre turn of events?

Faced with this dilemma, Chris and Ken decide to try to conceal the incriminating facts from subsequent arrivals.  The next couple on the scene, Claire and Lenny Ganz, have their own problems to wrestle with.  Lenny’s brand new BMW has been rammed in the side by “some stupid bastard shoots out of his garage like a Polaris rocket.”  As a result, Claire is suffering from a ballooning lip, and Lenny from whiplash.  These woes add to the general sense of tumult and disorder in what was to have been a decorous evening.

As Ken and Chris rush about pretending that all is well, and that Charley and Myra, a little behind schedule, are actually in their bedroom getting ready for the party, Lenny and Claire grow suspicious: there’s no food, no toilet paper, no sign of their hosts.  Finally Claire draws her husband aside and confides to him that she has heard rumors in their tennis club that Charley has been cheating on Myra.  Lenny is indignant at such poisonous gossip, and denounces the club members as a, “Bunch of hypocrites.  Sit around in their brand-new Nikes and Reeboks destroying people’s lives.”

Into the middle of this thicket of nasty revelations Ken, no longer capable of concealing the truth, dumps the news that Charley has been shot, probably attempting to kill himself.  As Lenny and Claire try to grasp this appalling piece of news, a Volvo parks in the driveway and disgorges the next pair of guests, Ernie and Cookie Cusack.  As they approach the house, the earlier arrivals debate whether to let them in on the bad news about Charley.  Chris advises against it, theorizing that Cookie, who hosts a television cooking show, might inadvertently spill the beans on the air, getting them all in trouble.  The group agrees to try to keep the new guests in the dark, and another round of  zany deception begins.

Cookie, suffering from a back ailment that only prevents her from sitting down and getting up, adds yet another disorder to the growing list of woes afflicting these party-goers: Charley’s wound, Clair’s swollen lip, Lenny’s whiplash.  And soon Ken deafens himself by accidentally discharging Charley’s pistol next to his ear.  Each petty misery thickens the stew of woes and worries surrounding the main problem while further complicating its solution.

The fourth and final pair of guests, Glenn and Cassie Cooper, arrive feuding.   Cassie is convinced that her husband, a candidate for the state senate, has been cheating on her with a campaign aide.  Like their predecessors at the party, they wonder where their hosts are, why there are no servants in evidence, why there is no food ready.  And so, yet another set of balls is added to the bunch already being juggled by the harried, and now deaf, Ken.  New excuses, new lies, new improbabilities are spun into the lunatic atmosphere of this doomed party, including the assertion that Charley and Myra are keeping to their room to watch a PBS documentary on Hitler’s childhood—a “whole new slant” on the dictator.

As matters reach ever higher levels of insanity, the phone rings with a call from Venezuela—friends of Charley and Myra, cousins of Cassie.  People scurry to answer, trip over telephone cords, lose possessions down the toilet, fall to the floor with aching backs, and grab their twisted necks in pain as chaos erupts, and the curtain falls on the first act.

As Act II begins, the eight party-goers are finishing the meal Cookie has been talked into preparing for them while Lenny, having decided further concealment is impossible, finishes letting the cat out of the bag about Charley and Myra.  Anxiety is general, since all these respectable people are worried about the damage to their careers that might follow from their involvement in the bizarre events of the evening.  Exacerbating the tension is the escalating hostility between Glenn and  Cassie, whose marital troubles lead them to storm out of the house for some physical combat in the driveway.

Eventually the police arrive, throwing everyone into a panic.  As it turns out, however, the officers have no interest in Charley’s whereabouts or the gunshots that have sounded in the house.  Instead, they are trying to track down the driver of the stolen car that earlier crashed into Lenny’s brand new BMW.  The police are just about to leave when Glenn blurts out something about the gunshots, and a message arrives over the radio that neighbors have phoned in a report about a disturbance in the house.  The police then demand to meet face to face with Charley for an explanation of what has been going on all evening.  But Charley is incapacitated, so Lenny, who has been hiding upstairs in the bedroom, pretends to be Charley, and invents what seems like an utterly ludicrous story to explain the gunshots, the wounded ear, the absence of Myra, and the disappearance of the servants.  This account—key features of which are that Myra has fallen down the steps to the basement where, thanks to an error by Charley, she has been locked in, and that Charlie has accidentally taken four valium, thus rendering himself unconscious for the remainder of the evening—is so preposterous that the police officer decides to accept it, and leaves the guests to their own devices.

As everyone is congratulating Lenny for his brilliant improvisation, the real Charley, having recovered consciousness, summons his friends to his room.  As they ascend the steps, we hear a knocking at the cellar door and a voice begging to be let out—the voice of Myra.  As the curtain falls, we—and the flabbergasted guests—are left wondering if Lenny has somehow told a preposterous lie that has miraculously captured the truth.
 

IV.  THE CHARACTERS

Characters in farce are frequently drastically simplified versions of human beings, lacking the depth and complexity we associate with more sophisticated comedy or with tragedy.  Instead they are often driven by a single appetite or obsession, and are marked by an easily identifiable set of psychic—and physical—quirks and gestures.

Thus in Rumors all the characters are propelled by the need to conceal Charley’s suicide attempt and to protect themselves from its scandalous consequences.  And all of them bear signature afflictions or peculiarities which help to set them apart from their otherwise indistinguishable fellow guests.

Ken differs from Lenny in being deaf rather than whiplashed, Ernie from Lenny in being burned, Glenn by having been whacked by his wife with a telephone.  On the female side, Chris longs to smoke, Claire sports a fat lip, Cookie suffers from a bad back, and Cassie is fixated on her crystal.  In a sense, except for these minor differences, they are all virtual clones of one another, occupying similar rungs on the professional ladder, attending the same charity balls, and viewing the world from identical upper-middle class, suburban eyes.

Indeed, Neil Simon underlines this comical resemblance among his characters when Lenny recites their names into the telephone:
 

LENNY:  Yes, Charley, we’re all here . . . Len, Glenn, Ken, Ernie, Claire, Chris, Cassie, and   Cookie.
CLAIRE: Isn’t that odd that all the women’s names begin with a C? . . . .  And all the   men’s names are the same.  Len, Glenn, Ken.

In fact, it is this similarity that accounts for much of the comedy of Rumors.  The point about the Three Stooges, after all, is not that they look different from each other, but that they are indistinguishably stupid.
 

V.  THE THEMES

Students of the social phenomenon of rumor tell us that it tends to occur when “both the interest in an event and its ambiguity are great;” that rumors are especially common when “the demand for news is greater than the supply;” that rumors multiply when “a group of people share the need to act but are reluctant to do so until the situation can be better defined,” or when “events threaten the understandings upon which normal life is based.”

All of these conditions hold true during the course of Neil Simon’s play.  Everyone on stage desperately wants to know what happened with Charley and Myra, but the situation is shrouded in ambiguity.  All eight of the guests demand “news” but are frustrated because it is in short supply; all eight need to protect Charley and themselves, but can’t effectively do so because they don’t know what exactly happened.  And above all, the understandings—and expectations—supporting their normal lives are violently undercut when these well-off suburbanites arrive at a party to find the host bleeding from a bullet wound and the hostess mysteriously missing.

To explain what has gone wrong, they invent stories involving the sexual betrayal of husband by wife and vice versa—stories supported by nothing but the need to supply some measure of coherence to their surrealistically disrupted evening.

Thus, in addition to protecting themselves from scandal, the next most important requirement of all these characters is the need for understanding, for some narrative structure that will draw all the disturbing facts about Charley and Myra into a meaningful pattern.  The rumors they generate are therefore different from gossip, which seeks the malicious pleasure of hearing and saying bad things about other people.  Instead their stories express a philosophical need for order and clarity.  As the sociologists tell us, rumor is a “seeking, rather than a believing, process, in which every idea, no matter how invalid, provides a way of comprehending a strange or troublesome event.”
 

VI.  QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1.  Who are Ken and Lenny more concerned about, Charlie or themselves?

2.   Apart from friendship what are the relationships between Charlie and Ken, Lenny, and Ernie?

3.  Why are these relationships dramatically important?
 
4.   Why is the fact that Glenn is running for state senate dramatically important?

 5.  What is the importance of the fact that Cookie has a cooking show on television?

6.   Have you ever heard or helped to spread a rumor?  What were the circumstances?

7.  What is the difference between rumor and gossip?

8.   How would you explain the fact that Lenny is right about Myra being locked in the basement?  A lucky guess?  Some other reason?

9.   Why would the police have left without checking to see if Myra was actually in the basement, and thus confirming Lenny’s story?

10.  What is the significance of the various injuries and peculiarities that mark each of the characters?