Melted Clock

On Saturday, I went to see a performance at the Toronto Fringe Festival. Playwright David Ives (Venus In Fur) wrote All in the Timing, 9 absurdist playlets/scenes. This production (Miller's Son & From the Oven Productions) used 5 and over the course of an hour, delighted the audience with their pace, humour, and word-play.

In Words, Words, Words, 3 chimpanzees were locked in a cage until by random chance, they typed out Hamlet. These erudite primates discussed the many absurdities of their situation including how they would even know their task was done. Then we found ourselves with Leon Trotsky (The Variations on the Death on Trotsky) as he found out he would die/was dead this day from an entry in Encyclopedia Britannica. Multiple segments had him questioning the "truth" of his situation, each one ending with Trotsky keeling over dead as he finally realized he had an axe in his skull. We were then in the office of the inventor of Unamundo (The Universal Language), an invented language full of non-sense syllables and bad puns. Finally we were in a diner for The Philadelphia and Sure Thing. In the former, characters had personal situations that were named after cities. If you were stuck in a "Philadelphia", you never get what you asked for; meanwhile, it was all sunny skies and optimism in "Los Angeles". In the latter, as two strangers tested each other out romantically, each can ring a bell to "roll back time" and reset the last sentence or two in their conversation, if the information was deemed offensive, rude, or unwelcomed (community college vs Harvard).

All the scenes had a love of words and rapid-fire dialogue. They were all quite funny, better than most sketch shows I've seen. The audience was particularly taken with The Philadelphia though Trotsky came a close second. The actors were in fine form with Nicholas Porteous excelling as Trotsky, fluent Unamundo speaker, and overly sunny "Los Angeleno".