David Ives comedies rely on timing, rhythm to pull off the punch
By Beth Zukowski
“Is this seat available?” asks the hopeful guy to the girl he wants to get to know. Her first “no” would have ended the scene.
But imagine a bell signaling the chance to ask again and the chance, perhaps, to get a positive response. This is the premise of David Ives’s comedy, “Sure Thing.” It is one of five acts from the playwright’s classic collection, “All in the Timing,” to be performed at Colorado Mountain College in Glenwood Springs-Spring Valley.
Ultimately, Bill (played by Shaun Reed) gets to take the seat next to Betty (played by Sophie Sakson). But the bell continues to ring every time Bill says the wrong thing. Each ring erases the memory of the flubbed attempt and allows him to try again.
All of Ives’s scenarios are based upon wild what-ifs, director Wendy S. Moore explains, like the “what if a bell would ring every time we said something stupid?” in “Sure Thing” or the “what if we lock three monkeys in a cage – would they write ‘Hamlet’?” found in “Words, Words, Words.”
“They are very, very funny plays,” says Moore, “with a genius approach to characters.”
Timing, rhythm keys to a winning comedy
It takes more than punchlines to make for a funny show, however. “Comedy is far more difficult than drama,” Moore says. “There’s a rhythm to it. If the timing is off, you will not get the comedic effect.”
Actor Brian Thornton agrees. “The timing can make or break it,” he says, “and fortunately I’m working with great people who understand that.”
Thornton appears in two acts: “The Universal Language” and “Time Flies.” His character Don in “The Universal Language,” he says, “is an insane con man, a mix between a used car salesman and ‘Back to the Future’s’ Doc Brown.”
Don tries to convince Dawn (played by Kristin Adam-Bondy) that he can teach her to speak Unamunda, a phony language made up of partial-English words and puns.
“I get to go over the top on stage, dancing like a buffoon,” Thornton says. “Then Wendy tells me to keep going more and more over the top!”
Mortals, monkeys and mayflies
“Mere Mortals” is the story of a lunch hour shared by three construction workers on a girder 50 stories high. The only things taller than their perch are the tales they tell, with each one trying to one-up the other.
Two of the acts are about non-human characters with human voices and feelings. In “Words, Words, Words,” three monkeys, each with a typewriter, are confined to a cage into infinity. They are subjects of an experiment seeking to prove that eventually they would re-create Shakespeare’s “Hamlet.”
Nick Garay, who plays the monkey named Swift, identifies the challenge of his role as “trying to remember to act like a monkey while saying my lines.” But it’s also part of the fun, he says, “getting to jump around and do things to annoy the other monkeys.”
He and his fellow chimps Katie Starry (Kafka) and Cody Hill (Milton) are all Colorado Mountain College students who were in part chosen because “they had good knees,” jokes Moore.
At their typewriters, the monkeys share what they’ve typed. The audience will recognize pieces of Hamlet but the chimps regard it as gibberish and their gibberish as poetic.
In the other anthropomorphic play, “Time Flies,” two mayflies watch a nature video about their one-day lifespan. It is already mid-day before they realize the implications.
Other members of the cast include: Quinn Garvik (“The Universal Language” and “Mere Mortals”); Mike Banks and Ralph Young (“Mere Mortals”); and Jimmy Coates and Summer Cole (“Time Flies”).
Performances of “All in the Timing” are April 21-23 and 28-30 at 7 p.m. in the New Space Theatre at Spring Valley, along with a 2 p.m. matinee on Sunday, May 1.
Tickets are $15 for adults and $10 for students, seniors, staff and faculty, and can be reserved via svticketsales@coloradomtn.edu or 947-8177. They can be purchased with cash or check at the door.