 |
| Getting
it right: (l-r) Martin and McDermott in All in the
Timing. |
Monkey
Shines
By
James Yeara
All
in the Timing
By
David Ives, directed by Audrey Looye and Terry Rabine
Home Made Theater, Spa Little Theater, through Feb. 26
David Ives is brilliant. The various compilations of his one-act
plays are a treasury of gems. They sparkle, they shine, they
gleam, they dazzle, no matter who the jeweler is or what type
of setting is selected. His short one-acts usually have absurd
scenarios featuring quirky characters who always have a verbal
sinuosity that’s the aural equivalent of watching a belly
dancer’s navel. His words move, twist, shimmy, shake, and
even seem to wink.
But underneath the plays’ surface cynicism and surreal situations
beats a hopeful heart; despite a cosmos aligned against them,
his characters succeed. The world is absurd, but life triumphs.
Theatrical productions usually pick and choose from his two
collections: his most recent, Time Flies, had a sterling
production titled Lives of the Saint (the title of
one of the one-acts) at Berkshire Theatre Festival in 2002.
Ives’ earlier collection of 14 one-acts, All in the Timing
(a line from the biggest hit of the collection, Sure Thing),
is frequently produced by undergraduate theater programs looking
to please audiences with Ives’ trenchant, twisting verbal
displays.
Home Made Theater’s current production of six one-acts from
All in the Timing preserves Ives’ wit despite a clunky
set and even more obtuse entr’acte songs that are the antithesis
of the plays’ sinuosity; the brilliant “Words, Words, Words,”
about three monkeys trying to type Hamlet in a Columbia University
experiment (and succeeding by play’s end), is followed by
“Hey, hey we’re the Monkees” while the cast and crew move
the set pieces around at the direction of a ringmaster intoning
bad limericks. The effect is like being served a six-course
dinner with a wandering karaoke minstrel singing between each
course.
The courses are wonderful despite the bulky, migrating set
pieces and numbing soundtrack. Sure Thing is the hit
seemingly based on the old improv exercise of making a new
choice after a bell rings. Bill (Daniel Martin) tries to pick
up Betty (the delightful Kate McDermott) at a Manhattan café
but continually fouls up: “Waiting for your boyfriend?” Bill
asks. “Sort of,” Betty replies. “What’s a ‘sort of’ boyfriend?”
Bill snottily responds. “My lover. Here she comes now,” Betty
exclaims—and the bell dings and the scene starts with a new
choice. This continues until the pair finally end up married
with three children going to “Vassar, Brown, and Harvard.”
The aforementioned Words, Words, Words features strong
simian performances by Stephen Davis as the chimp named Swift,
Peter Burleigh as the ape Milton, and Winnie Bowen as the
rhesus monkey Kafka. Amid a swirl of literary allusions one
would expect (given the characters’ names), the three engage
in physical simian behavior while bantering about the nature
of life, the universe, and everything. So adept were the three—at
one point Burleigh carries Davis piggy-back and stops down
center to pick up a discarded sheet of text with his toes
and regards it in typical editorial fashion—at monkey behavior
that I wish that they had thrown dung at the annoying sound
design or toppled the sets.
The
Universal Language closes out the first half and was the
highlight of HMT’s production. The con man Don (a nerdy J.J.
Buechner) teaches his made-up language, “Unamunda,” to his
one and only student, lonely stutterer Dawn (Kate McDermott).
As with Sure Thing, despite all objections and obstacles,
love blooms, and there is an ache in the center of Dawn that
McDermott fully embodies: “Language is the opposite of loneliness,”
Dawn blurts out. When Don and Dawn unite in a flurry of Unamunda
excess, it is pleasing.
The second half of the show, Mere Mortals, The Philadelphia,
and Variations on the Death of Trotsky, seemed to run
out of shine. Mere Mortals replaced Philip Glass
Buys a Loaf of Bread from the original incarnation of
one-acts that made up All in the Timing, and I ended
up wishing that the bell would have dinged on the choice.
Having performers shout is no substitute for having them act
the roles of construction workers, but this surface-skimming
marked the second-half choices. The wit of David Ives still
shone through, but it was like seeing a diamond encased in
cubic zirconia.
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