Simonized Rumors cranks out the laffs BY BILL RODRIGUEZ

OK, Neil Simon fans, it’s time for your annual farce fix. Rumors is at Granite Theatre, down in Westerly, so come a-runnin’.

Be aware, though, that it’s not as well-crafted as his memoir plays. When Simon wrote Rumors in 1988, his 1991 Pulitzer for Lost In Yonkers was not yet on his mantelpiece. But he did have nearly two dozen mostly successful plays behind him and could convince his ticket-buying loyalists to follow him anywhere.

So this comedy has the lazy, meandering quality of an attention-grabbing raconteur who knows his audience will forgive digressions. Therefore, in Rumors Simon now and then indulges in his main technique for popularity — and his principal weakness — lying like an amiable con man. Whenever the pace flags, he has a character pop up with a one-liner that nudges the laff meter back up toward redlining. We’re talking gags here, drawn from situations, not from Rumors’ characters. If it’s been too long since the last laugh, Simon figures, have the actors drop to all fours and search for the earrings of an hysterical somebody who soon notices them in her hand. That sort of thing.

There are plenty of such sitcom opportunities in this frolic of a play, two acts of crisis response — a dilly of a problem strikes right before the opening curtain. We are in a posh Manhattan apartment, where a tenth anniversary black-tie party is supposed to begin soon. But the host, we learn from the two frantic people on stage, is out of sight, bleeding from a gunshot wound to the earlobe. (If, knowing that, you don’t anticipate an early pierced-ear joke, you don’t know Neil Simon.)

Nursing the absent Charlie is his lawyer, Ken (Michael Thurber), whose interest is more in quelling a potential scandal than stanching blood. You see, the inept apparent suicide candidate is the deputy mayor of New York. So the helter-skelter tempo is set right away, as Ken emerges from the bedroom now and then to bark orders to his nearly hysterical wife Chris (Heidi Thompson), who has paged Charlie’s doctor out of Phantom of the Opera.

The mystery is more than the case of the lobe-less ear, since Charlie’s wife is missing and the servants are gone too. The host — whom we never do see — is soon popping Valium and weeping into his pillow, sucking his thumb. Other guests start arriving, and the merry go-rounds begin.

The first couple whom the bad news has to be kept from is Charlie’s accountant Lenny (David Jepson) and wife Claire (Beth Jepson). They have just had an accident with his brand-new BMW and whiplash has stuck his head in the upright position. Lenny says he hopes there are a lot of tall people showing up. Claire gets an even better wisecrack, saying that she nearly bit off the tip of her tongue in the accident and could be speaking Gaelic for the rest of her life. Of course, the doctor at Phantom has to be bothered again. (If you think this is the last time, you don’t know Neil Simon.)

Two more couples are thrown into the mix. Cookie (Diana Blanda) has a successful TV cooking show and a gushily doting psychiatrist husband, Ernie (Steven Bartholomew), plus an upbeat personality that would make Julia Child look like a depressive. Despite her having a bad back and later damage from kitchen carnage — Simon offers these actors a smorgasbord of physical maladies to play for sight gags — she gleefully prepares dinner for them all. Simon could have gotten some last-act character development mileage out of Cookie by having her blow up at the party-goers, who sneer at her generosity. But the playwright makes her oblivious and, in her own word, stupid. Blanda rescues the role charmingly, though.

The last pair of conflict opportunities are Glen (Greg Bliven) — who can’t afford to be touched by scandal because he’s running for state senate — and his obnoxious, infidelity-suspecting wife Cassie (Courtney Leivers). Last, that is, until two cops show up and Lenny gets to improvise a long, convoluted tale of what happened to their reclusive host — with which Jepson does a great, rat-a-tat job.

The acting ability here varies as widely as Simon’s jokes, from broad to clever. Production values are top-notch, with the Upper East Side apartment classed up with a black leather couch and love seat. Tuxedos and black-and-white evening gowns, especially one snazzy sequined number, maintain a Noël Coward atmosphere, even if the dialogue cannot. (The set and costume design are uncredited.)

Rumors has enough material for a one-act comedy. For the second half, the playwright gives the theatrical equivalent of a butcher with his thumb on the scale. Many Simon fans won’t much mind, I suspect. As with the TV variety show skits he wrote in the 1950s, if viewers are eager enough to laugh, sheer momentum can carry them through.