On Abington stage, the voice of authority

How should a high school student act, when acting the role of a police officer in a student play?

Ask a cop.

So on Wednesday, Abington police detective Robert Allmond found himself onstage at Abington Senior High School.

Making an arresting impression.

As himself.

"How do you be intimidating?" asked Lauren Bertino, 17, a senior from Glenside, one of the actors playing a police officer in Neil Simon's 1988 Rumors.

"You're a cop," Allmond said.

"Just stand next to someone who's being a knucklehead. Just being in proximity gets the people nervous."

Allmond should know. This is his 27th year as an officer, almost all of them in Abington.

Though Allmond is assigned full time to the senior high, Abington Lt. Patrick Molloy, commander of the community policing division, said in a Wednesday phone interview, "this might be the first time" that any officer has coached any actors.

On Wednesday afternoon, Allmond was fielding questions from student cops on an empty stage, in the hour before full cast rehearsals would begin there in the empty school auditorium.

Kristen Caiazzo, a 2008 Arcadia University graduate and 11th-grade English teacher, is directing the play. Relentlessly.

Rehearsals have been going on since the first week of September, from 2:45 to 5 p.m. every single school day.

"The big joke is that I own them," Caiazzo said of the 12 cast members. "But during rehearsals most do have some downtime to do homework."

Still, she said, the play "is very strenuous" on the students. "It's very slapstick, reminiscent of I Love Lucy, The Three Stooges."

The play opened on Broadway in November 1988 and ran for 535 performances. It earned Christine Baranski, currently a law firm owner in the TV drama The Good Wife, the Tony for best performance by a featured actress.

Rumors gathers several couples for a party at an upper-class suburban house in New York. But they find that not only are the servants and hostess absent, but the host has just shot himself through an earlobe.

Because the host is a deputy mayor of New York City, and the police are on the way, one of the guests has to portray the host and hope the cops don't catch on.

Though this is Bertino's first drama, she said, "I've been in musicals since third grade. In a senior high school production of Wizard of Oz, I was a Munchkin."

But acting is not in her future. It's studying chemistry.

Kyle Sukley, 15, a sophomore from Rydal, said before the rehearsal that "I've been doing shows since I was in fourth grade."

Now, describing the scene when his police character enters, Sukley asked Allmond, "Should this be delivered with a lot of attitude?"

Perhaps not wanting to intrude on the director's job, Allmond suggested only a stance. "If you're not believing them, what you can do is cross your hands." Like a parson.

Allmond had prepped by watching a Rumors production on YouTube, so he knew his next piece of advice wasn't in the script.

Still, Allmond told Sukley that he sometimes just places his handcuffs on a table. "Just the sound," he said. "It really messes them up."

Sukley won't be able to use the advice. "My interest," he said, "is in computer science and business."

The production is part of the school's celebration of American Education Week, Nov. 11 through 17, with performances on the evenings of Nov. 15 through 17.