my last play...
The last play I'll ever be in in Indiana opens tonight:
ok, it may not be an actually LJ Cut (i'm not sure How) but here are the LINKS to info about my last play ALL IN THE TIMING
in Muncie, IN
This weekend.
Here's the "review" (or as close as one gets in Muncie):
'Timing' produces lots of laughs
By MICHELLE KINSEY
mkinsey@muncie.gannett.com
MUNCIE -- It's not easy to pull off five short plays -- comedies no less -- in under two hours. It takes skill to be able to keep the momentum going, keep the laughs coming, and keep and audience with you from opening to curtain call.
Some would say it's all in the timing.
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A strong cast showed how it's done during the opening production of All In the Timing at Muncie Civic's Studio Theatre.
Director Mike Daehn chose five acts from playwright David Ives collection to explore -- Words, Words, Words; The Philadelphia; Variations on the Death of Trotsky; Sure Thing, and The Universal Language.
The three monkeys -- Elliot Lemberg, Ryan Lash and Jennifer Waldrip -- in Words, Words, Words, are confined to a room with three typewriters. On the other side of the wall are the scientists, testing the old philosophical adage that three monkeys typing into infinity will sooner or later produce Hamlet.
"For apes in captivity, this is not a bad gig," one of the monkeys notes.
There's little monkeying around here, with the trio of simians critiquing their work and debating whether or not to devise a plan of attack.
It quickly became a humorous commentary on any Dilbert-like office, in which, as one monkey puts it "we're getting peanuts to be somebody else's hack."
Lash was good -- A little too good? Just kidding -- at keeping up the monkey mannerisms, such as picking bugs off his coworkers, scratching a lot and making eeking sounds.
The Philadelphia was a high-energy piece about a man, Mark (played by Jonathan Kratzner), who is trapped in "a Philadelphia," a Twilight Zone kind of space where he cannot get anything he asks for.
He meets up with his friend, Al, at a diner. Al (played by Matthew Renskers) couldn't be happier because he woke up in a L.A. Mr. happy-go-Hollywood offers some advice -- ask for the opposite and you'll get what you want.
It works. And so does this act. Kratzner was perfectly paranoid as Mark. Renskers, who offered up some fantastic facial expressions, could not have been better as the breezy, "everybody-has-to-be-some-place" Mark.
Variations on the Death of Trotsky was just as it sounds -- different takes on demise of the Russian revolutionary. His wife enters with an encyclopedia from the future which states that a mountain climbers axe was smashed into his skull. And there sat Trotsky behind his desk, an axe protruding from his noggin, on the day he was to have croaked. The variations on this theme came fast and funny, thanks to great character work by Kratzner as Trotsky and Waldrip as his wife.
After a brief intermission, the audience was treated to the hilarious "pick-up" piece, Sure Thing. Usually done with just two actors, I really enjoyed the variety offered with three pairs of actors. The idea is this: a man meets a woman at a coffee house. Sounds simple, right? Not quite. Conversational faux pas began spilling out of mouths, followed by a "ding" from a bell, offering up a Groundhog Day chance to turn back the clock and try again...and again...and again.
And more than any other act of the evening, this one required perfect timing. And all of these talented young actors -- Lash, Meg McCreery, Lemberg, Caitlyn Lynch, Zak Spurgeon and Waldrip -- pulled it off. The facial expressions and physical comedy (made more difficult by having to "freeze" in position for several seconds) was very well done.
The Universal Language ended the show on a love note. A young woman with a stutter shows up to learn a new language, hoping that her speech impediment might not translate in Unamunda.
Dawn (Waldrip) is immediately taken with the imaginative language, taught by Don (Renskers).
It was easy to see why this pair recently won an acting competition with this piece. They had great chemistry and their command of this fake language almost made you believe it was real. Although I did, at times, feel as though Waldrip forgot she had a stutter.
Perhaps it was the power of Unamunda. Some people, it turns out, do believe this language can unite us all -- check out the Unamunda-to-"Johncleaee" (English) dictionary at www.dartmouth.edu/~sullivan/unamunda/una-eng.html.
And be sure to check out this play. It will certainly be time well spent.
All In the Timing continues with performances at 2 p.m. today and 8 p.m. July 20-22. For tickets and more information, call 288-PLAY.
Contact entertainment writer Michelle Kinsey at 213-5822.
Originally published July 16, 2006
and here are the links for more info: http://munciecivic.org/Shows/showDetails.php?id=75
&
http://thestarpress.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060713/ENTERTAINMENT/607130312&SearchID=73251152461827