All in the Timing
All in the Timing is a book of six one act plays by David Ives dating from 1987 to 1993. The plays are short and comedic, with frequent wordplay. These plays are commonly performed due to their brevity, wit and simplicity in staging. They are:
- Sure Thing, where a man and a woman meeting for the first time in a cafe have an awkward meeting repeatedly reset every time they say the wrong thing, until they finally connect.
- Words, Words, Words, where three chimpanzees attempt to write Hamlet.
- The Universal Language, in which a man and a woman fall in love while communicating in the invented language Unamunda.
- Philip Glass Buys a Loaf of Bread, a musical parody of minimalist composer Philip Glass, in which he has an existential crisis in a bakery.
- The Philadelphia, featuring a man in a strange state where he must ask for the opposite of what he wants in a restaurant.
- Variations on the Death of Trotsky, in which Leon Trotsky dies, several times.
Ives, David. All in the Timing: Six One-Act Comedies. Dramatists Play Service, 1994. ISBN 0822213966.