A Fifth Crack at “All in the Timing”

By RAVEN SNOOK

It was during one of these productions that Rando and Ives struck up what’s turned out to be a fruitful and funny friendship. “We were introduced by our mutual agent,” Rando says. “David was looking for a director for a new play he had written, so he came to see the show at Syracuse Stage and we really hit it off. That’s how we started working together.”

“My relationship with David was the start of a real connection to a major writer,” remembers Rando. “So when Primary Stages called me [about the current revival], I said, ‘Yes,’ without hesitation. I did All in the Timing in Syracuse, Buffalo, LA’s Geffen Playhouse, and San Diego’s Old Globe over the course of two years, but that was in the ’90s. It’s just really great to be back working on these plays again.”

While Ives has made slight tweaks to the material—Rando calls them “textural flavoring”—the six shorts haven’t changed much from a playwriting perspective. That’s largely because they didn’t need to be updated: Instead of trafficking in topical or timely humor, they explore the complex and often absurd nature of human relationships via surreal social satire and clever wordplay.

In one short, for instance, two lonely souls fall in love in the bogus universal language of Unamunda, and in another, Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky analyzes the circumstances surrounding his death… with a mountain-climber’s axe sticking out of his head.

Yet even thought the words are the same, Rando makes it clear that this is a distinct production. “There is a considerable newness in terms of how the show looks and what this particular cast brings to it,” he says. One big addition: A fifth character in the minimalist art send-up “Philip Glass Buys a Loaf of Bread.” “In one of the regional productions I directed, I came up with this idea to create the Über Baker, this enormous baker that gives birth to these loaves of bread. The first time David saw it he was convulsing with laughter. So I imported that particular moment.”

—

Raven Snook regularly writes about theatre for Time Out New York and has contributed arts and entertainment articles to The Village Voice, the New York Post, TV Guide, and others.