![Leon Trotsky (Max Woghiren) meets a series of grisly demises in All in the Timing, an evening of six one-acts plays by David Ives presented by JM Drama. [Submitted]](https://www.observerxtra.com/content/images/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Post_ARTS_Timing.jpg)
JM Drama’s annual summer show is typically reserved for a musical – The Producers, Sweeney Todd, and Cabaret, among other Broadway standards. But this year, director Tim Jackson is bringing a different kind of spectacle to the Registry Theatre, as the group prepares to unleash All in the Timing, six one-act plays by David Ives.
“I was the one who kinda spearheaded this one,” said Jackson of the show, which opens Thursday. “I had the opportunity of working on this show between 10 or 15 years ago as a stage manager for a production, so I got to see from the top level and everything all together. Since completing that show, this has been on my list of things that I’ve wanted to direct one day.”
He added, “I like to bring more comedy into the theatre community. People want to come out, laugh, be entertained, and have a great time.”
Best known for the 2011 Broadway success of Venus in Fur (soon to be a Roman Polanski movie), as well as popular adaptations of A Flea in Her Ear, South Pacific, and White Christmas, Ives first made his name in the Manhattan theatre community with a series of sharply comic one-act plays. All in the Timing, a collection of six of his best sketches, highlights Ives’ wit, and skill with complicated verbal comedy.
“It’s very well written,” said Jackson. “David Ives knows his comedy very well. There are a lot of different layers to his comedy, and it’s been great to explore those through the rehearsal process and bring them to life onstage.”
He continued, “It was definitely very challenging. We’ve really had to dig into the script and find a lot of those little hidden meanings and nuances. Especially with ‘Sure Thing,’ things have to be very precise in certain areas.”
Jackson is here referring to the first one-act, in which a man attempts to ask a woman out on a date over and over until he finally gets it right. “It’s very much like a large section of the movie Groundhog Day, although ‘Sure Thing’ was written before Groundhog Day,” Jackson said.
Other sketches worth looking for: ‘Words, Words, Words,’ in which chimpanzees (only three, not one hundred) try and fail to write Hamlet; ‘The Philadelphia,’ in which a man finds himself in an existential dead zone similar to the rust belt state (his friend, by contrast, is in “a California”); and the self-explanatory ‘Philip Glass Buys a Loaf of Bread.’
“David Ives wanted to write as much of a musical as he could in six minutes without using an orchestra,” said Jackson. “That one can go in so many different directions artistically, so I’ve taken it as [a chance to] make fun of musicals along the way.”
The evening climaxes with Jackson’s personal favourite, ‘Variations of the Death of Trotsky,’ chronicling the final hours of the revolutionary’s life. “The show opens up with Trotsky, and he has a mountain climber’s axe in his head, and he’s writing at his desk,” said Jackson. “It just gets funnier from there.”
All of these disparate ideas are held together, sort of, Jackson explained. “There are two themes that seem to be running all the way through. One of them you can get from the title: time. Clocks are a running joke in there. The other one that we’ve seen as a uniting topic is bells.”
This doesn’t make much sense outside of its context, of course, but Jackson has enjoyed seeing it come together.
“For the rest of the cast, I’ve encouraged them, when they’re between sets, to watch the other ones. It’s great to hear people laughing when they’re supposed to laugh, and they get a better sense of the show as it gets tied together.”
All in the Timing runs August 8-10 and 15-17 at 7:30 p.m. at the Registry Theatre in Kitchener (122 Frederick St.). Tickets in advance are $20 or $15 for members ($22/$18 at the door), or $5 for eyeGO participants, and can be purchased by calling
519-578-1570, or online at www.centre-square.com.
