Great Theater Civic’s Comedic ‘Timing’ Could Hardly Be Better
“All in the Timing” Friday, March 6, Firth Chew Studio Theatre at Spokane Civic Theatre
What if “Saturday Night Live’s” sketches were actually funny? What if its sketches actually went somewhere?
What if they actually stretched, instead of insulted, your intelligence?
Then it would be exactly like David Ives’ “All in the Timing,” one of the freshest, smartest and funniest stage comedies to come along all year. Think about Tom Stoppard crossed with Monty Python, and you’re halfway there.
If you’ve never heard of Ives, and most people haven’t, you’re in for a happy discovery. It helps that director Marilyn Langbehn has given this work a funny and inspired production. She was either exceptionally lucky in her casting, or more likely, exceptionally smart.
“All in the Timing” consists of six short pieces, most about 10 to 20 minutes long.
The first, “Sure Thing,” has more wit and truth than most full-length plays. In it, Betty (Denise Sutton-Utter) is sitting at a cafe reading a book. Bill (Thomas Heppler) asks if he can sit at her table. The ensuing attempts at romance end in disaster.
For instance, when Betty asks if he has a girlfriend back home, the answer one time might be, “Two.” At which point a bell will ring, and they restart the conversation, not necessarily with better results. The next time the answer might be, “Only mother.” Both Heppler and Sutton-Utter deliver these conversations with a perfect mix of exasperation and false bravado.
However, with an unlimited supply of mulligans, so to speak, these two lonely people gradually feel their way toward a meeting of the souls. Ives is clearly a romantic at heart, if a clear-eyed one. What he is saying is this: Romance is difficult, but given an unlimited amount of time and an unlimited number of false starts, it can happen.
Which leads directly into the second, and most broadly hilarious piece, “Words, Words, Words.” In it, Ives brings an old cliche to life: Three monkeys pounding on typewriters into infinity will eventually produce “Hamlet.” Scott Finlayson, Kathie Doyle-Lipe and Maynard Villers are those three monkeys, part of a Columbia University research project, but they’re not a happy bunch of monkeys.
“What is ‘Hamlet’, anyway?” one of them complains. “How are we supposed to write ‘Hamlet’ if nobody tells us what it is?”
What would have been a one-joke sketch in lesser hands builds into an absolutely brilliant and utterly hysterical riff on literature, language, primate behavior, group dynamics and the ineffable silliness of academic research projects. This is the key to Ives’ superiority over most writers of comedy sketches: His sketches build.
The third may be the most brilliant of all. “The Universal Language” is the story of Don (Ron Varela), who is teaching an Esperanto-type language called Unamunda to Dawn (Ann Russell). It turns out that Unamunda is a fraud, something the audience figures out early since the word for “welcome” is “Velcro,” and the verb “to be” is conjugated, “arf, wharf and barf.”
However, Don is like Professor Harold Hill in “The Music Man.” He may be a fake, but Dawn doesn’t care because she miraculously loses her stutter.
Varela and Russell give virtuoso performances in what must be diabolically difficult roles. Can you imagine doing an entire scene in a goofy made-up language? They not only navigate it smoothly, but they give it depth and heart. Director Langbehn struck the lottery with these two performers.
The three miniplays of Act II are possibly a slight letdown, but that’s only because the first act is so unflaggingly brilliant. “Philip Glass Buys a Loaf of Bread,” is a musical goof on the famous minimalist composer. Two lines are spoken, and then the cast starts singing the words in those lines, rearranged and repeated endlessly in Glass-ian style. Of all the playlets of the evening, this is the most one-note, in more ways than one.
“The Philadelphia” is a funny and clever piece about a weird dimension called a “Philadelphia” where you can’t get anything you ask for. You must ask for the opposite. Terry Sticka and Heppler do a great job in this one.
The final piece, “Variations on the Death of Trotsky,” begins with a visual joke. Trotsky (Villers) has an ice-ax sticking out of his head. He finds this to be quite curious. Ives builds this into an exploration of time, death and the veracity of encyclopedias.
Langbehn’s direction is unflaggingly sharp. She not only nails the timing (crucial for any comedy, but especially one called “All in the Timing”) but she grasps Ives’ points and drives them home.
Speaking of timing, get your reservations for this show now. Once word gets out, it’ll be the scarcest ticket this side of the Everclear concert.
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo
MEMO: “All in the Timing” continues through March 28. Call 325-2507 for tickets and reservations.