All In The Timing

All In The Timing is a collection of one act plays by David Ives, each lasting around ten minutes. They are performed by A J Dimond High School from Anchorage, Alaska, as part of the American High Schools Theatre Festival. The plays are:Sure Thing – Two people meet in a café and find their way through a conversational minefield where they must keep restarting until they get it right.Words, Words, Words – In an experiment, three chimps are set to typing randomly. Will one of them sooner or later produce Hamlet?The Philadelphia – A young woman falls into a ‘Philadelphia’, a Twilight Zone like state in which she cannot get anything she wants.Variations On The Death Of Trotsky – The Russian revolutionary desperately tries to cope with the mountain climber’s axe he’s discovered in his head.The Universal Language – A young man teaches his self-constructed language to an eager young woman.Philip Glass Buys A Loaf Of Bread – The composer Philip Glass has an existential crisis in a bakery.The plays are very entertaining and amusing. Because of the time constraints they are very tightly written and quick moving. The four actors in the cast are all extremely good and cope well with the rapid word-play required.My favourite play was probably Sure Thing, which shows us a couple meeting in a café and the conversation required to go from initial meeting to a date. Every time they say the wrong thing the conversation is restarted and this continues until they get it right. Very clever and funny but also quite instructive.Well worth seeing.