Shallow Colony

Rumors

 * 1) Rumors by Neil Simon
 * 2) Comedy full act
 * 3) The setting of the play is at Charley Brock's home during his 10th anniversary party. Things don't go as planned when Ken Gorman and his wife, Chris, finds out that the staff is gone and Charley shot himself when his wife "left him" and "stole his car", but he missed and shot his ear.

Things get worse when Lenny and Claire Ganz, a couple who recently got into a car accident, gets there. They exchange rumors about what happened to Charlie, and they eventually find out what happens. The Cusacks arrive and another gunshot is heard. The gunshot is from Ken, who accidentally slips and the gun shoots right next to his head. The final guests arrive (the Coopers), while the Cusacks are making dinner.

After dinner the police arrive, and they had to make lies about what happened during the night. One of the officers, Ben Welch, doesn't believe one thing that they all say and demands to see Charlie Brock. Lenny pretends to be Charlie and tells Welch what happened. Welch is skeptical about it, but he believes it and the police leaves the house. Then what seemed to be Lenny's ramblings seem to be true.


 * 1) Lenny Ganz and Ken Gorman.
 * 2) A group of wealthy friends have to deal with miscommunication and trying to find a reasonable answer with an attempted suicide.
 * 3) Traditional Proscenium for the stage, since there are no scene changes. I think that Ben Welch needs to have that stern posture and a deep, bass-like voice. I saw something where a female was Ben Welch, and her voice was very light. It was similar to Tiffany Tieu's voice, and it took away the power of the character. Another good key for producing this play is to have someone who has Lauren's voice.
 * 4) Young adults to adults would find this perfect.
 * 5) I'll be honest and say that I found reading this aloud in the class was much more better than watching North's production. They made the characters less humorous than the play, plus they cut off some of the language so that it's more school appropriate. Cutting out the language of the play gives it less power than keeping the language. Plus North's production made characters like Chris annoying rather than what they needed to be, at least to my opinion. And North made one scene where Ernie and Cookie finds out from Lenny that Charley has been shot was extremely annoying. So annoying that it can be considered murder to the play, and if I payed money to see this production I would walk out and demand my money back because I saw such a terrible scene.

But onto the play itself. It's great. The flow between the dialogue is wonderful; the characters, main or secondary, are memorable, and it has the right amount of comedy and drama that it's possibly in the top 10 comedies for me. I would say that the best role to play for a female would be Cookie. Although she's not as in it as much as the other characters, she provides humor through her back problems. Lenny's monologue towards the end is great, then what seems like fast thinking is actually the truth.