Perfect Timing Ives’ ‘All In The Timing’ Begins Civic Theatre Run

Are you ready for David Ives?

If you like to laugh, and laugh at intelligent humor, then you just may be.

Ives has already conquered New York, where “All in the Timing” played to gushing critics and convulsed audiences in 1993. In fact, the play made Time magazine’s 10 Best Plays of 1994 list.

“Even in a 10-minute sketch, playwright David Ives can find a dozen ways to aerobicize the playgoer’s brain,” said Time.

Now Spokane playgoers will get their first taste of “All in the Timing” as the Spokane Civic Theatre opens its production at the intimate Firth Chew Studio Theatre downstairs. This is a collection of six short playlets, which apparently have only two things in common: They’re funny and they’re smart.

“There is sustenance as well as pure entertainment here,” wrote Ben Brantley of the New York Times in 1993.

Director Marilyn Langbehn, who also directed Ives’ “Ancient History” in Spokane last year, has assembled a cast of eight to play various characters from Leon Trotsky to a trio of monkeys.

Here’s a hint of what’s in store for each piece:

“Sure Thing” Two people meet in a cafe and get the chance to say exactly the right things on the way to romance.

“Words, Word, Words” Can three monkeys typing on a typewriter eventually produce “Hamlet”?

“The Universal Language” Dawn learns to speak Unamunda, the universal tongue. “Philip Glass Buys a Loaf of Bread” - A musical parody in the style of the minimalist composer.

“The Philadelphia” - A young man in a diner enters a bizarre dimension (“Philadelphia”) where he cannot get anything he asks for.

“Variations on the Death of Trotsky” - Leon Trotsky copes with the problem of having an axe stuck in his head.

Does that give you some idea?

If all of this sounds like sketch comedy, it’s sketch comedy with a point. Brantley compares Ives to Tom Stoppard with his penchant for comedy with philosophical underpinnings.

“Mr. Ives has created his own unlikely form of comedy: A feel-good theater of metaphysics,” said Brantley.

Indeed, Ives is no buffoon. He was formerly an editor of Foreign Affairs magazine.

Yet Ives himself identifies more with Monty Python than Beckett or Ionesco. He has said that he didn’t hit his stride as a playwright until he abandoned longer plays and started writing sketches and one-acters.

“They make their point and stop,” he once told the New York Daily News. “The things I really like most are short, like Napoleon and great, popular songs.”

Yet his plays also have a romantic warmth, unusual in Monty Python or any variety of slam-bang comedy.

“There is indeed a real heart beneath Mr. Ives’ intellectual tomfoolery, which may explain why one leaves the theater without the slightest pangs of emptiness that sometimes follow determinedly clever revues,” said Brandt.

“I go to the theater to watch people fall in love,” Ives told the Daily News. “Chekhov said the engine that drives drama is men and women, and I think that’s right.”

The men and women in this production include Kathie Doyle-Lipe, Scott Finlayson, Thomas Heppler, Ann Russell, Terry Sticka, Denise Sutton-Utter, Ron Varela and Maynard Villers.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 color photos

MEMO: ON STAGE The Spokane Civic Theatre will present “All in the Timing” in the Firth Chew Studio Theatre, 1020 N. Howard, Beginning Friday and continuing Thursdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m. through March 28, with a Sunday matinee on March 22 at 2 p.m. Tickets are $8. Call 325-2507 for reservations.