All in the Timing

Play

Writers: David Ives

Overview

Show Information

Book
Category
Play
Number of Acts
1
First Produced
1993
Genres
Comedy
Time & Place
various, bar/restaurant, bakery, small office turned into a classroom, a room with a tire swing, cafe, leon trotsky's study on august 20 (1940)
Cast Size
large
Casting Notes
Mostly male cast
Includes young adult, adult, late teen, mature adult characters

Synopsis

Featuring six diverse but equally hysterical one-act comedies, David Ives’ All in the Timing is a witty, romantic, absurd, and existentially-minded evening of theatre. In Sure Thing, a couple on a first date has the opportunity to reset and try again each time they say the wrong thing. Words, Words, Words takes the “infinite monkey theorem”-- the idea that given enough time, three monkeys in a room could eventually compose any given text, including Shakespeare’s Hamlet -- and turns it into reality. In The Universal Language, a shy young woman places her faith in her fraudulent language tutor, who is changed for the better when he discovers is the language they share: not the the made-up “Unamunda” professes to be fluent in, but rather the language of love. Philip Glass Buys a Loaf of Bread is an existential mini-musical parody based on the work of composer Philip Glass. In The Philadelphia, a man discovers that he’s entered a strange pocket of the universe where the only way to get what he wants is to ask for the opposite. Finally, in Variations on the Death of Leon Trotsky, the audience is treated to the hilarious vision of the famous Marxist waxing poetical -- and dying, over and over and over again.

Notes: A recent republishing of All in the Timing features an additional 8 one-acts. All casting can be doubled or not, and each one-act can be performed in any order, on its own or together with others.

Lead Characters


All in the Timing guide sections