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Theatre in Review: All in the Timing (Primary Stages/59E59)

Carson Elrod, Jenn Harris, Matthew Saldivar, Liv Rooth, ERic Clem. Photo: James Leynse

The timing couldn't be more right for another look at David Ives' popular collection of comic sketches; the winter blahs are no match for this magisterial exercise in carefully controlled lunacy. Ives is a specialist at taking a bizarre premise and pushing it off the nearest cliff -- all while maintaining an air of professorial sobriety that all but dares you not to laugh. In the Ivesian universe, existential dread is expressed in the style of Warner Brothers cartoons: Baffling new languages are invented as marketing gambits, innocent souls fall into malignant states of being named after second-tier cities, and Leon Trotsky putters about his office with an axe firmly planted in his head. In the author's view, we're collectively sitting over a trap door, and laughter is the only sensible response.

One of Ives' big themes has to do with time's wayward way with us; time may be playing tricks on me, but John Rando's new production of All in the Timing seems several degrees more hilarious than the 1993 original. Certainly, Rando has deployed a near-perfect cast, each of whom seems acutely tuned in to Ives' private wavelength. First among equals is that human action figure Carson Elrod, his normal, nice-guy looks belying his rubber limbs and demonic energy. Appearing as a young man whose halting attempts at picking up an attractive stranger are reset every time their conversation leaps the rails, he delivers his dialogue with screwball-comedy speed and precision, carefully striking new poses each time a bell rings, signaling the next round of amorous chit-chat. The lights have barely gone down on this sketch when he returns as a monkey, named Swift, who occupies a lab with two other simians (named Kafka and Milton) and three typewriters. (Ives is riffing on the old canard that says a congregation of primates, left to their own devices and supplied with the correct writing instruments, will sooner or later produce Hamlet. Instead, Milton comes up with the opening verses of Paradise Lost. "But is it Shakespeare?" asks Swift, dripping with disapproval.) Elrod's most indelible character is the instructor of a new Esperanto-style language, urbanely alternating expressions like "squeegee la mozza" and "bell jar Harvard unamunda" with alarmingly proficient pratfalls. (The lingo turns out to be quite understandable after a brief immersion; it only takes a few minutes before "John Cleese" becomes a perfectly sensible substitute for the word "English.")

Certainly, Elrod is in good company. Matthew Saldivar brings an innate dignity and unexpected air of sweet reason to the most ludicrous situations, whether he is playing the ape Milton, complaining about his working conditions and commenting on another's work ("It's kind of onomatopoeic"), or as poor Trotsky, who can't understand about that axe and what it has to do with the oppression of the masses. Liv Rooth scores as Kafka, the dishy blonde-bombshell monkey who illuminates their group dilemma ("It's sort of publish or perish, with a twist!") and as the matronly Mrs. Trotsky, her eyes deep pools of woe, carefully ducking every time her husband turns his head, sending his axe handle in her direction. And Jenn Harris, whose peerless deadpan manner was the highlight of Silence! The Silence of the Lambs Musical, puts that skill to good use here as a member of the chorus of automatons in a pseudo-Philip Glass opera, and as a sullen waitress sent by the universe to frustrate every need of a luckless customer (Elrod again, trapped in "a Philadelphia," and don't ask me to explain this; you'll have to see the show.) She also proves surprisingly touching as Elrod's language student, who discovers that when she speaks his nonsense tongue her lisp mysteriously disappears.

Rando has also seen to it that All in the Timing has a most stylish production. The upstage wall of Beowulf Boritt's boldly striped set keeps turning to reveal yet another distinctively rendered clock, to establish the tone for each new sketch. The set opens up amusingly during "Philip Glass Buys a Loaf of Bread," a mini-opera that lays waste to the tortured conventions of Robert Wilson's art-house music-theatre extravaganzas. Jason Lyons' meticulous lighting mixes colors, shadows, and patterns to give each sketch a unique look. Anita Yavich's costumes include casual everyday wear, the kind of children's outfits that organ grinders prefer for their monkeys, a ten-foot-tall baker's uniform (size approximate), and an outfit for a Mexican gardener who dresses like Emiliano Zapata. Ryan Rumery's sound design combines original music with scene-setting cues, like that bell that keeps ringing during "Sure Thing," the getting-to-know-you sketch.

One reason this production works so well is that Rando never loses sight of the realities under Ives' mad creations. There's real frustration lurking here, as well as loneliness and even something like terror. The final sketch -- the Trotsky melodrama -- may be the most outrageous, but it ends on a distinctly melancholy note, suggestive of the end that lies in wait for all of us. The hilarity is constant, but these pieces stick with one in a way that has nothing to do with mere gagging.

Then again, in another era, Ives would be a master of the revue, meaning that now-gone entertainment that mixed comic sketches with the latest songs and dances. For once, the playwright's timing was off; he arrived on the scene after the demise of the theatre form that could best accommodate his talents. In any case, there's nothing wrong with 90 minutes of steady hilarity, delivered by an expert cast. If that doesn't do wonders for your February, I don't know what will.--David Barbour


(12 February 2013)

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