“ALL IN THE TIMING” ion theatre at the 6th
Avenue Bistro
Airdate: 05/18/07
Here’s a little theatrical brain-teaser: What do
Hamlet, Trotsky, Philip Glass and Philadelphia have in common? And the answer
is…. They all pop up in “All in the Timing,” a supremely witty, literate series
of playlets by David Ives. They don’t appear together in the same vignette, but
each makes for a hilariously clever reference. Here’s how it goes. Three chimps
are typing away, trying to create ‘Hamlet’; Trotsky totters around with an axe
sticking out of his head; Philip Glass takes 15 minutes and a zillion tuneless,
minimalist iterations to buy a loaf of bread. And Philadelphia is a very
unfortunate, cheese-steak state of mind.
In insensitive hands, this high-brow comedy could
become decidedly low-brow, veering toward the silly and slapstick. Ives
certainly builds plenty of physical comedy into his amusingly erudite work. But
as co-directors, ion theatre co-founders Claudio Raygoza and Glenn Paris strike
just the right note, so the plays can be appreciated at many different levels,
even if you don’t catch all his literary references or appreciate all the
linguistic legerdemain.
Ives is a Yale Drama School graduate, and though
this is his best-known work by far, he’s been writing plays and musicals and
adaptations and even children’s books, ever since these one-acts premiered in a
small New York theater in 1993 and went on to win an Outer Critics Circle
Award. He used to write for the smart, funny ‘Spy Magazine,’ and New York
Magazine once named him one of the “100 Smartest New Yorkers.”
In the unremittingly clever “All in the Timing,”
there are six short pieces. One of my favorites is “Words, Words, Words” (a
quote from “Hamlet”). It’s a riotous riff on the “Infinite Monkey Theorem” that
posits that, given enough time, a typing chimpanzee
could create a Shakespearean masterpiece. So Ives puts three wildly verbal
monkeys in a room – by the names, and with the literary styles of -- Milton, Swift and Kafka. If you know
something about those writers, and about “Hamlet,” you’ll laugh yourself silly.
But if not, you can still split your sides just watching these
propeller-wearing, masturbating, banana-eating apes trying to figure out what a
‘Hamlet’ is, as they critique the ridiculous phrases each of them randomly
types.
It’s all very sly,
clever social commentary -- about science, about communication and
socialization, and in another of my personal favorites, “The Universal
Language,” about the failed 19th century creation of Esperanto.
Unamunda is a lot funnier… and it’s impossible to listen to it for 15 minutes
and not start using its crazy patchwork of battered English (the language Ives
calls ‘johncleese’). You might just start greeting folks with “Velcro,
Harvardyu?” (‘Welcome. Howa re
you?’).The segment is a kind
of inspired, loopy bilingualism, and it’s amazing how fast you begin to
understand this linguistic lunacy.
Ion theatre certainly gets it. They did a short
run of the Ives work last summer, and it was so well received, they refurbished
the cabaret-like subterranean venue at the 6th Avenue Bistro
downtown, which serves drinks and food to the audience, and re-mounted the
piece with the same cast, for an open-ended run. As their publicity-meister
puts it, the show is “the thinking man’s ‘Triple Espresso.’”
The cast is a hoot: four talented, malleable,
endlessly amusing actors who’ve performed at many local theaters: Laura Bozanich,
Andrew Kennedy, Jonathan Sachs and Kim Strassburger. Though I’ve now seen the
show three or four times, at different venues, I still laugh out loud, and I
get a little something new out of it every time. And Off Corset and Oh, my
Galosh! Unamunda is eedgie to learn. Eggsovereedgie…. Et cinema, et cinema.
The ion theatre production of “All in the Timing“
continues an open-ended run at the 6th Avenue Bistro downtown.
©2007 Patté Productions, Inc.