Lisa Rinna, Phaedra Parks and Dolores Catania are joining Stacey Rusch, Cynthia Bailey, Eileen Davidson, Carole Radziwill and Candiace Dillard-Bassett in an Off-Broadway revival of Neil Simon's 1988 farce Rumors at the Newman Mills Theater, with performances beginning January 9, 2027, per Variety.
The director's pitch for the production is "the delicious chaos that unfolds when private lives become public spectacle." That is not a play logline, that is a channel description for Bravo. Neil Simon wrote Rumors in 1988 — a party in a wealthy suburb, a host in an alarming state, a missing wife, and the police on the way — and he basically wrote the Real Housewives format twenty-eight years before Bravo needed it. The only thing Simon got wrong was assuming the cover-up would unravel by act two.
Every woman on the cast list except Rinna is making her Off-Broadway debut, which is the kind of thing that used to be a headline and is now a bullet point. Rinna already has her Broadway credits — Roxie in Chicago, and the upcoming It's a Wonderful Life revival. The director is Zhailon Levingston, who won a Tony for Cats: The Jellicle Ball, which means the man steering this farce has personally herded cats. And there are two casts running through spring, which is the actual news: one ensemble is a show, two ensembles is a franchise.
YOUR TURN: Neil Simon wrote a farce where the wife disappears and everyone covers for the husband. Who in that group chat is the wife?
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