Comedy—they are fond of saying—is all in the timing. Yes—in addition to trapeze artistry and knowing when to cut an avocado—comedy demands timing. Such is the premise behind David Ives’ collection of six short comic plays, All in the Timing, which opened on Friday at Theatre Knoxville Downtown. Director Greg Congleton and eight actors took this comedy journey, pushing the results beyond quick-sketch slapstick to embrace a roller coaster ride of frontal attacks to the audience’s funny bone and humor index. There is a lot to catch in these six pieces, so don’t blink.
Although Ives is known for his more recent adaptations and parodies of classic plays and other theatre pieces, such as The School for Lies and Venus in Fur, he made his reputation with a host of comic one-acts. All in the Timing was the most-produced play in the U.S. in the 1995-96 season. Clearly, Ives loves the language of wordplay, a sort of intellectual vaudeville where a blend of rhythm, timing, and surprise create an ebb and flow that pulls the audience along on the comic journey.
The evening opened with Sure Thing, a rapid-fire piece of variations in which a man (Bill Householder) meets a woman (Lisa Silverman) in a coffee shop, the two having the opportunity to continually redo their conversation, bit by bit, until they achieve the hoped-for romantic success. It was a joy to watch Silverman change mood directions with her facial reactions, going from a “get lost, creep” to an enthusiastic “yes” in the blink of an eye.
The second piece, Words, Words, Words, derives from that old theory that three monkeys, left to their own devices with three typewriters, will eventually produce Shakespeare’s “Hamlet.” Ives has named his monkeys Milton (Mark Palmer), Kafka (Greta Thorderson), and Swift (Spencer Flottman), with the three meandering through a wealth of physical and verbal gags. I had to stifle a chortle at the antics of Thorderson’s Kafka, who, bewildered and bemused, sadly finds her work repetitious after continually typing the letter “k”.
The Universal Language—my favorite piece of the six for a number of reasons—featured Craig Smith as a conman professor selling lessons in a nonsense language of his own invention called Unamunda to a shy, stuttering woman, Dawn (Anna McCoig). Of course, Unamunda is bogus, a collection of words derived from free associations (“Ding” for “yes”), re-assignments (“Velcro” for “welcome”), and blatant comic references (“Howardjohnson” for “how do you say”).
What’s remarkable is that Ives actually invented enough vocabulary to make the idea work. Even more impressive was that Smith and McCoig were gloriously masterful in delivering the comic arc of the piece, with McCoig gradually picking up the language and making a beautiful personality transformation, losing both shyness and stutter in the process. Of course, in that process, the two find that they share the language of love.
The second half of the evening opened with Philip Glass Buys A Loaf of Bread, a quasi-musical sketch-parody harking to the repetitions and movements of the Glass/Robert Wilson piece, Einstein on the Beach. Unfortunately, a hundred-or-so Philip Glass jokes have been told and retold since this work was first performed in 1990, leaving this particular one a bit stale. Nevertheless, any mention of the brilliant Philip Glass and his music, parodied or otherwise, is okay with me.
A diner is the setting for The Philadelphia, where Mark (Spencer Flottman) discovers he has entered the alternative universe of “Philadelphia” where he can only get what he wants by asking for the opposite. Al (Craig Smith) helps him understand this because he’s in a “Los Angeles” where losing his wife and his job are just not that serious. Anna McCoig, doing a brilliantly constructed turn as the waitress in the diner, understands their dilemma because she’s in a “Cleveland.”
Variations of the Death of Trotsky finished off the evening with a bit of comic existentialism, assuming that that even exists. Leon Trotsky (Bill Householder) gets the opportunity to replay the last day of his life from various angles, musing on the subject of one’s destiny, with the help of Mrs. Trotsky (JoAnn Damiani) and his assassin, Ramon Mercador (Spencer Flottman), all the while sporting the infamous axe sticking out of his head.
If you missed opening night of All in the Timing at TKD, don’t despair. Destiny and timing is on your side—the show runs through Sunday, September 29.
800 S. Central Street (at Cumberland)
Information & tickets: 865-544-1999, http://www.theatreknoxville.com/
I liked the show but the theatre space itself is hardly adequate. Unless you sit in the first couple of rows, the sight lines are atrocious since the house seating is not tiered. Also the acoustics were lacking. Some heavy investments in renovations are badly needed.
Few people would argue with you on that.