All In The Timing Revised.mp4

All in the Timing
by David Ives

David Ives' collection of six one-act plays is an utterly delightful if not absurd exercise in wordplay that tends to support the notion that people have a better chance of connecting with each other if they never speak.

Sure Thing is as short rapid-fire vignette about a man and a woman who meet for the first time in a cafe, where they have an awkward meeting continually reset by an alarm each time they say the wrong thing. Words, Words, Words finds three chimpanzees attempting to write Hamlet.

The Universal Language is about a man and a woman who fall in love while communicating in the invented language, "Unamunda." Philip Glass Buys a Loaf of Bread parodies minimalist composer Philip Glass and The Philadelphia finds a man who must ask for the opposite of what he actually wants in a restaurant. Variations on the Death of Trotsky is self explanatory.

Time Magazine said, "Theatre that aerobicizes the brain and tickles the heart. Ives is a mordant comic who has put the play back in playwright . . . a wondrous wordmaster."

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• niu
• NORTHERN
• ILLINOIS
• UNIVERSITY
• ALL
• IN
• THE
• TIMING
• DAVID
• IVES