CRT’s “All in the Timing” an aburdist, existential romp

STORRS — What can you say about six short one-act plays that take the real world and turn it on its head?
The plays were written by David Ives at different times and are presented together as a kind of Ives surreal smorgasbord.
These vignettes investigate the nature of connection through an invented language in “The Universal Language,” the absurd study of chimps attempting to type in “Words, Words, Words,” and a stop-motion language of courtship in “Sure Thing,” and others.
Directed by AJ Rose at the Nutmeg Summer Theater at the Nafe Katter Theater at the University of Connecticut, these mini-plays require an actively attentive audience, rather than just kicking back.
There aren’t many plays that joke about Faulkner’s “The Sound and the Fury” but they do in “Sure Thing.”
Have you ever had that feeling of saying the wrong thing and wishing that you could yell “cut!” and begin again? This one act explores that possibility in a humorous and intellectual manner.
Blake DeLong plays Bill who walks into a restaurant and meets the stranger, Betty, played by Gretchen Goode.
They engage in various halting attempts at conversation, and each time they go too far, or say something they wish they hadn’t, a desk clerk bell rings and they get to try it again.
The absurdist “Words, Words, Words” has three actors playing chimpanzees, DeLong as Swift, Goode as Kafka, and Phil Korth as Milton, who are being tested by scientists to see if they can type, through random chance, Shakespeare’s “Hamlet.”
You wonder who’s using whom when Korth’s Milton slyly observes, “for apes in captivity this is not a bad gig.”
They talk a good game amongst themselves, and have all the intelligence needed to get what they want, food and shelter, but can’t articulate their knowledge through their typing, and only produce endless nonsense.
Kristin Wold and Mark Emerson are charming and disarming as student and teacher in “The Universal Language,” an attempt to bring all people together under one common tongue called “Unamunda” that sounds suspiciously like the pig Latin of my youth, or rip everyone off in the process.
It is a delightful celebration of the quirky, extreme, and “bizzaro,” but interesting. The fantastical “Philip Glass Buys a Loaf of Bread,” is an ode to Glass and Robert Wilson’s wild ground-breaking surrealist opera, “Einstein on the Beach” with Goode, Wold, Emerson, and DeLong as Glass, in an intricate, seamless opera-like staccato performance that is difficult to describe, but strangely satisfying to observe.
“The Philadelphia” short play is something like the song “I’m in a New York state of mind.”
DeLong observes that it is “opposite day” for Mark, played by Korth, where everything he asks for, he gets the exact opposite — a sure sign that he woke up in “a Philadelphia,” he is told.
Meanwhile, DeLong, playing Al, lost his job and his girlfriend, but doesn’t care because he woke up in “a Los Angeles.”
Being in “a Cleveland” is the worst state of all, because DeLong says, “Cleveland is like death without the advantages.”
Wold and Goode play Edna and Flo, two Polish church helpers, in the sweet and humane “Lives of Saints,” where the everyday acts of caring for others is honored, and the interesting, complex sound effects, operated by DeLong, Emerson, and Korth, are revealed.
In his comments on his plays, Ives says he enjoys the collaboration with actors during the creative process even more than the plays’ performances, and you can sense the improvisational, random elements at work here.
Directed by AJ Rose, “All in the Timing” is like nothing else you have probably ever seen, and is well acted and energetically performed.

ALL IN THE TIMING

3 Stars
Theater: Connecticut Repertory Theatre
Location: Nafe Katter Theater, 802 Bolton Rd., Storrs
Production: Written by David Ives. Directed by AJ Rose. Scenic design by Michael Anaia. Costume design by Lucy Brown. Lighting design by Zakaria M. Al-Alami. Sound design by Nathan Leigh. Technical director Stefan Koniarz.
Running time: 2 hours with one intermission.
Show Times: Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday at 7:30 p.m., and Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m., with matinees Saturday and Sunday at 2 p.m. through June 20.
Tickets: Admission $25 and $37. Call 860-486-4226 or visit their website at www.crt.uconn.edu.
ACTOR…CHARACTER
Blake DeLong … Bill, Philip Glass, Swift, Al
Gretchen Goode … Betty, Kafka, Flo
Kristin Wold … Dawn, Waitress, Edna
Mark Emerson … Don, Baker
Phil Korth … Milton, Mark