Theater: Comical characters amusing drive 'All in the Timing'

Saturday, September 06, 2008

By Robyn Vincent

Jackson Hole, Wyo. - What do three chimpanzees, two lonely hearts and a victim of a fatal ice axe wound have in common? They’re all the absurdly hysterical and sometimes heartfelt subjects in Off Square Theatre’s new production, “All in the Timing.”  On the shadowy, minimal stage of the new Black Box theatre space, performers Jamie Reilly, Caryn Flanagan, Jeff Bratz and Kelly Bouma take on the roles of 14 characters in five short plays as they spin a web of side-splitting scenarios.

The result: a perpetually spellbound state for audiences who must ponder the subsequent twists and nonsensical turns. A sweeping Broadway smash written by David Ives, the play finds a short-lived home in Jackson, opening, 8 p.m., yesterday, and running until Sept. 6.

Director Chris Clavelli, who starred in an off-Broadway production of the comedic collective, said although each play prescribes to a particular recipe of madness, the underlying theme in every work resonates with the intrinsic power of language and how it can be the catalyst for some of life’s most peculiar circumstances.

“David Ives is a master of the English language. His use of puns, his sense of twisting the language and his wit is precise,” Clavelli said. “His outlandish characterizations and the situations that he throws these people into are so innately comic and bizarre that it keeps you on the edge of your seat.”

Opening the show, “The Sure Thing” tells the story of a pair who crosses paths while sipping on cappuccinos. But like many initial encounters of hopeful love interests, these two can’t seem to say the right things. Each time they leak yet another cumbersome comment to one another, the sound of a bell dings throughout the little black theater, indicating to the audience their increasingly tongue-tied state.  In the process of this uncomfortably amusing predicament, Clavelli said that eventually, the couple’s fondness for one another pokes through the surface.

“It’s hardly a ’sure thing’ but the love is there, making it very funny and very touching,” he said.

Turning in a different direction, down the play’s numerous language-dilemma boulevards, “Words, Words, Words” challenges the animalistic instincts and intelligence of three monkeys forced to type one of Shakespeare’s famous works.  

“It is based on an old joke that three monkeys typing to infinity will sooner or later produce Hamlet,” Clavelli explained. “These monkeys don’t even know what Hamlet is, but they’ve been asked to do it, bringing about this existential funk,” he added.
But the conversation stirrer is “The Death of Trotsky,” based on the 1942 murder of Marxist theorist, Leon Trotsky. Killed by a Spanish communist with an ice axe,
Trotsky survived for more than 24 hours after the murder weapon was removed from his skull. Although toying with a seemingly gruesome subject matter, the joke centers on Trotsky’s stubborn denial of the attack. Clavelli makes a cameo appearance in the play as Trotsky’s old Jewish wife.

“The comedy is that Trotsky does not believe he has an axe in his head, this goes on for six scenes which show six variations of Trotsky dying on stage, and each one is a hysterical treatment of this wild man’s bizarre display,” he said.
For tickets call the Off Square Theatre box office, 733-4900.

Photo by Zac Rosser


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Theater: Comical characters amusing drive 'All in the Timing' | Planet JH News Article: General News

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