Cookie (Keisha McFerrin), Lenny (Ray Martel) and Ernie (Michael Box) try to determine what happened to Charley and his missing wife, Myra, in the Boerne Community Theatre production of Neil Simon's ''Rumors.'' Courtesy photo

If such deep and meaty works as "Chapter Two" and "Lost in Yonkers" could be considered the chateaubriand on Neil Simon's menu of theatrical fare, "Rumors" is a glazed doughnut.

A comic melange of bon-mot one liners and pratfalls, the two-act play is nutritionally worthless in terms of character development and substantive plotline. However, the recent Sunday matinee crowd at the Boerne Community Theatre, where tonight "Rumors" enters the first of its final four performances, found that this laugh-a-minute pastry of a play hit the spot which is apparently proximate to the funnybone in their hankering for a bit of afternoon amusement.

One gets the distinct suspicion that Simon, the beloved American playwright Time magazine dubbed Broadway's "patron saint of laughter," wrote "Rumors" to purge a waxy buildup of hilarious one-liners (a Neil Simon hallmark) that he had saved up in some repository of riotousness. This production is laugh-outloud funny because Simon delivers the goods, albeit in frenetic fashion, and it's all any group of actors can do to keep up with him.

Set in 1988 in the New York home of Myra and Charley Brock, the latter being NYC's deputy mayor, the entire play takes place in the salon of the home, where well-heeled guests are gathering to help the Brocks celebrate their 10th anniversary. We enter the action as first-on-the-scene guests Chris and Ken Gorman (played by Samantha Fisher and Patrick Crowley) are all in a dither over finding host Charley in his bedroom not-so-mortally wounded with a gunshot - possibly self-inflicted - through the earlobe and is seriously sedated. Spouse Myra and the kitchen staff are nowhere to be found - although the groceries for a sumptuous dinner party are laid out at the ready. Ready to be cooked, that is. As one of Charley's attorneys, Ken is quick to caution Chris not to let others in on the facts, particularly since they don't have any. It just wouldn't do to have the deputy mayor making sensational headlines.

The plot thickens some with the arrival of Clair and Lenny Ganz (Jo Grabow and Ray Martel), who as members of the country club set are privy to the CC set's ubiquitous gossip, and word from one member or another is that one Brock or the other is having an affair. No facts. Just the usual casting of scandalous aspersions. After an initial smokescreening of the Ganzes, the Gormans end up letting the other couple in on the few facts and attendant speculation. The Ganzes reciprocate with the country-club dish.

Next in the door are Cookie and Ernie Cusack (Keisha McFerrin and Michael Box), a TV cooking show diva and her psychoanalyst spouse who get the same runaround before entering the fold of the clued-in clueless. At least Cookie knows how to work a kitchen and eventually heads off, with her fawning husband's help, to prepare dinner for the guests. Meanwhile, Glenn and Cassie Cooper (Tracy Littlejohn and Sharon Beales) arrive to bicker over Glenn's fidelity and Cassie's overdevotion to her mystic crystal. All are gradually brought in on the gunshot situation and the absentee wife.

Once the core cast assembles, anyone who doesn't have an existing ailment (such as Cookie's bad back, Lenny's whiplash and Claire's fat lip from being bashed in their brand-new BMW) eventually gets one: Chris develops bottle flu, Ken is rendered deaf by an accidental gunshot, Ernie burns his fingers, Glenn gets a bloody nose and Cassie tragically suffers from crystal deprivation when she loses hers down the loo. All the afflictions serve to set up much of the play's physical comedy. In particular: Box makes much use of his bandaged fingers, gesticulating wildly at every turn and bringing to mind a tree frog in the throes of a seizure.

While each of the actors does well to keep up with the fast-paced action and faster-paced dialogue, Grabow and Martel take standout turns in their roles. Some credit should go to Director Patty Loftis' casting, which takes advantage of the two actors' natural accents - Martel's New England influence and Grabow's British inflection and their enhancement of the audience's absorption with their characters.
Also enjoying a moment in the lights, Ian Schoolcraft enters the play in the second act playing Officer Welch with real relish. He is accompanied by Sara DuBose as Officer Pudney.

The play benefits grandly from the BCT's new, expanded facilities, which allowed for the construction of a well-crafted two-story set that creates a new dimension of audience enjoyment.