Product Description

The world according to David Ives is a very add place, and his plays constitute a virtual stress test of the English language -- and of the audience's capacity for disorientation and delight. Ives's characters plunge into black holes called "Philadelphias," where the simplest desires are hilariously thwarted. Chimps named Milton, Swift, and Kafka are locked in a room and made to re-create Hamlet. And a con man peddles courses in a dubious language in which "hello" translates as "velcro" and "fraud" comes out as "freud."

At once enchanting and perplexing, incisively intelligent and side-splittingly funny, this original paperback edition of Ives's plays includes "Sure Thing," "Words, Words, Words," "The Universal Language," "Variations on the Death of Trotsky," "The Philadelphia," "Long Ago and Far Away," "Foreplay, or The Art of the Fugue," "Seven Menus," "Mere Mortals," "English Made Simple," "A Singular Kinda Guy," "Speed-the-Play," "Ancient History," and "Philip Glass Buys a Loaf of Bread."

"Theater that aerobicizes the brain and tickles the heart...Ives is a mordant comic who has put the play back in playwright." -- Time

[ ^Top ]

The Timing is great!        Rating:

All in the Timing: Fourteen Plays
This is a great book if you are looking for humorous scenes to use in an acting class. Or if you are thinking about producing an evening of one acts - these are crowd pleasers for any high school theatre. Some language might have to be edited for classroom use.

A fun read        Rating:

Ives is original and funny, with an acute sense of satire and irony. I chose the book as a text for an EFL course, for which it is not really suited, but I have greatly enjoyed reading the plays all the same. Recommended.

A wonderful collection        Rating:

I've been a fan of Ives since I first did a piece of his, about a man who thinks he's a typewriter, in an acting class. I saw easily the best production of "Sure Thing" ever a couple years ago. His humor is sometimes subtle, sometimes absurd, but is always entertaining. I highly recommend this collection to anyone who'd love a good laugh at the absurdities of life.

[ ^Top ]