Date: Fri 11-Sep-1998

Publication: Bee

Author: CAROLL

Quick Words:

Players-Timing-Philadelphia

Full Text:

(rev "All In The Timing" @Town Players)

Theatre Review--

Players' Great "Timing" Is An Experience To Share

By Julie Stern

When I was in the sixth grade, my parents began pulling me out of school on

the occasional Wednesday afternoon so that the three of us could go to a

Broadway matinee. The second show we ever went to was a less-than-memorable

revue called Bless You All. Still, I will never forget one sketch which was

their rendition of "Euripides' Medea as done by Walt Disney."

The chorus, made up of Huey, Dewey and Louie ducks in short pants and little

caps, sang a refrain that went something like "Oh Medea, oh Medea, we're so

very glad to see ya..." while a woman wrapped in black was screeching

"Aieeeee, Aieee."

My mother leaned over and confided helpfully, "there's a very famous actress

named Judith Anderson, who screams like that." I didn't fully appreciate the

satire until much later, but I found the piece fascinating; I had never

realized that's what grownups got to see.

I remembered that afternoon while watching the Little Theater's merry

production of David Ives' All In The Timing , at Newtown's Little Theatre last

weekend.

That this would be a great show to take bright kids to -- sophisticated

middle-schoolers on up. There is a lot of "bad" language, but nothing they

haven't heard, or probably used, on the school bus.

There is also a lot of clever language and linguistic inventiveness in the

five comic sketches. We saw the show elsewhere a few years ago, but it is

really much better suited to the intimacy of The Little Theater. Mary Poilu's

sure-handed direction gets the best out of both the script and her performers.

In the first piece, Joanne Stanley, Lew Robinson and Manuel Browne play Kafka,

Swift and Milton, respectively, three chimps who are participating in a

scientific experiment. An unseen Professor Rosenthal is testing the

proposition that if you lock a bunch of chimps in a room with typewriters and

allow them to bang away at random, they will eventually, and completely by

accident, type out Hamlet .

While the video camera is running, the trio behaves like apes -- eating

bananas, grooming each other for lice, climbing on a tire swing. But when the

camera light is off, they engage in the tormented, philosophical discussions

of true creative artists, using the language and voicing the concerns of their

respective literary namesakes, interspersed with clearly recognizable snatches

of that play about the existential dilemma...

Philadelphia is the second experiment for the Players with their comic timing.

The city is a state of mind, or, as Daniel Mulvihill, Jr, explains to his

buddy, a metaphysical black hole you fall into where nothing you want is ever

possible: the drugstore doesn't carry aspirin, the cabbie doesn't go downtown,

and the coffee shop is out of coffee... and milk... and juice... and soda...

Mulvihill is unconcerned, however, because he's in an "L.A.," where you feel

so laid back it doesn't matter that he's just been fired, his wife has left

him, and the only thing on the menu is Hungarian duck blood soup. It is up to

his pal, played by Steve Affinito, to learn the strategy of coping -- in

Philadelphia, you only ask for what you don't want. He is soon rewarded by the

attentions of Debra Creedon, as a particularly surly waitress.

In The Universal Language, Ron Malyszka gives the performance of his life. A

con man has invented a supposedly magical form of communication which consists

of stringing together unconnected terms that sound meaningful. In turn, his

shy customer, Pam Sweat, begins to believe that "John Cleese" is "Unamondo"

for "English" and "Har-vard" is "How are you?"

Philip Glass Buys A Loaf Of Bread is a Dada-ish fugue about the famous

minimalist composer, and Sure Thing follows the course of a Friday evening

encounter in a cafe, where two blundering singles are allowed to press a

restart button every time they make the kind of conversational misstep that

would nix their chances of making a connection.

The whole package is extremely funny. As the title says, it's all in the

timing, and director Poilu handles that perfectly.

Adults will love this show, but as I said at the beginning, if you want to

give your kids a treat, let them in on this piece of grown-up entertainment.

What a great experience to share.

(The Town Players will continue to present All In The Timing until September

26. Call 270-9144 for ticket information and/or directions to The Little

Theatre in Newtown.)