It’s had the feel of an ongoing Neil Simon fest lately in Napa, what with Dreamweavers producing four or so of Simon’s works.

Then, last weekend, as Napa High was wrapping up its final performance of Simon’s “Rumors,” Dreamweavers was opening its current run of his newer work, “The Dinner Party.”

In the interest of full disclosure, I should mention that my daughter was involved in “Rumors,” which did give me a chance to ask why Napa thespians were doing “Rumors” again when it seemed like I’d just seen Napa High do “Rumors.”

She explained it was a sentimental favorite, as it was the first Napa play many of the graduating seniors had worked on. OK.

“Rumors” is also one of Simon’s liveliest farces, a loopy concoction based on the premise that given a choice between lying and telling the truth, a lawyer will invariably opt for the former.

The setting is the 10th anniversary party of a couple who never actually appear in the play; but the first guests who arrive at the party, Chris and Ken Gorman (played by Derek O’Reilly and Lindsay Stoltz) discover that their host is upstairs in bed having shot himself through the earlobe and their hostess is nowhere to be found; the servants are absent and the food uncooked.

Being lawyers, the Gormans decide the only thing to do is to cover up for the anniversary couple any rumors that something may be amiss.

This leads to all kinds of mishaps and hijinks as other couples arrive: accountant Kenny Ganz and his country club-set wife Claire (Cory Jorgensen and Leah Reisman); analyst Ernie Cusack and his wife Cookie, a cook (Chris Henderson and Lauren Turigliatto); and a politician (Christian Ayvar) and his estranged, crystal-rubbing wife Cassie (played alternately by Maggie Crane and Afton Younger). Presently, the police (Steven Orloff and Lisa Rios) turn up.

It’s a hilarious play, and the Napa cast did full justice to it — it’s a tribute both to their talent and their director, Sharon Rogers, that the timing was spot-on; the play rippled along like a river in spring; the audience was howling with laughter; and Jorgensen’s screwball monologue, in which he improvises an explanation for the police, was classic. It is really too bad that Jorgensen, who is so consistently entertaining, has to go and graduate.

It’s clear, however, that the void that he and O’Reilly (who was an absolute hoot when he, as the lawyer, temporarily lost his hearing) will leave will be filled admirably by the likes of Ayvar, whose politician was far more entertaining than any on the current national stage, and Henderson, who was comically clever as the over-intellectualized analyst who gets mistaken for the butler, and Orloff, the long-suffering policeman, trying to get a coherent sentence from the partygoers.

As for the women in the cast: They were positively merciless in their portrayal of older women as disasters. I understand several of them, including Stoltz, Reisman and Crane, plan to go on to study drama, so with luck we may see them on stage again some day.

On to Dreamweavers.

‘Dinner Party’

First off, this was one of the best casts Dreamweavers has assembled recently.

This clearly talented group did some fine acting, and it was one of the first Dreamweavers productions that moved along and was over before 11 p.m. The problem is: They were working with one of the dumbest plays I’ve ever seen — not funny dumb, just plain old “huh?” dumb.

There are a lot of strange things about “The Dinner Party,” first of all that it’s ostensibly set in Paris (a great set, by the way). The characters all have French names, like Claude and Mariette, but beyond this they did not resemble any French people I’ve met, who seem to have a fairly practical attitude toward marriage.

And marriage is the theme of this work, I think, as in: Primates are more successful at mating than humans, but then so are lizards, bats and black widow spiders.

To return to the scene: A table in a private room at a restaurant is set for six guests.

One by one they arrive, first three men, who eventually discover they’ve all been invited by the lawyer who handled their divorces.

Guest No. 4 turns out to be the ex-spouse of guest No. 2; and guest No. 5 is the ex-spouse of guest No. 1; and, you guessed it, guest No. 6 is the ex-spouse of guest No. 3. She, it transpires, is actually the mastermind of this jolly gathering, (the lawyer is off in Sardinia) and she has instructed the staff to lock them in.

At this point, the play could go one of two ways: a farce or a murder mystery. Simon does neither. In fact, just what he does remains unclear.

Simon has said he was experimenting with form in this play,  but his experimental form lacks crucial underpinnings, most of all a sense of truth.

For example, we watch this gorgeous woman, guest No. 6,  who for some reason I never really understood is determined to reunite with guest No. 3, who left her because of her offense of enthusiastically satisfying his every sensual whim and fantasy.

Locked in the restaurant, she’s more or less pouring herself over him like a bucket of honey, but he is steadfastly rejecting her again because he’s decided he wants to have children.

Or something like that. It is possible he does not know how children arrive in the world — but are we really in France?

One guesses he was attempting to be serious but we end up witnessing something like “A Long Day’s Journey That Really Doesn’t Go Anywhere” or “Waiting for the Point” or maybe “Who’s Afraid of Three Divorced Couples Who All Have Issues?”

There probably are worse things than being locked up with six people who are required to state the nicest and the worst things their ex-spouse ever did for them before they can either escape or get their dinner, but I’m writing this on deadline and don’t have several days to try to think of one.

The play has flashes of wit, but they are as rare as light bulbs in a dungeon; for the most part the dialogue is chained up by the dreariest of psycho-babbling group therapy rhetoric.

When one character began lamenting her lost of self-esteem (are you sure we’re in France?) I began writing down a list of Really Dumb Lines These Good Actors Had To Try to Say With a Straight Face.

This winner was: “Can’t you say a sentence without squeezing it out of your brain like demented toothpaste?”  (I checked with my companion for the evening to make sure I wasn’t the only one who’d heard this. Nope.)

When a writer runs out of sensible adjectives for toothpaste, I, for one, have to wonder — as did the Dave Barry about Paul McCartney’s regrettable “wo, wo, wo, my love” lyrics — “Has his brain been taken over by aliens from the planet Twinkie?”

The production, directed by Louise Anderson, features Arthur Goulart, Don Laughridge, Robert Dougherty, Gail Silverman, Patte Quinn and Taylor Bartolucci.

It’s entirely to the actors’ collective efforts, I believe, that the audience was all there after intermission. But it’s a fine cast wasted; it’s really too bad they too hadn’t done “Rumors,” too. Or better yet, maybe Dreamweavers can try another playwright.

Note to Vintage High School parents: I do know that Vintage presented “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” this weekend, too, but L. Pierce Carson and I ran out of nights to see everything; I promise we’ll have a review of “Midsummer” next week.