Laughs Keep Lively Pace in ‘Timing’

Some people say that scripted sketch comedy in the theater died soon after people realized they could just stay home and watch “Your Show of Shows”; some say it was when Nichols and May broke up. Those reports were premature. At the Geffen Playhouse, “All in the Timing,” an evening of six smart one-acts by David Ives, is a reminder that theatrical sketch comedy is not some forlorn art form swallowed up by the soulless laugh tracks of television. The medium is alive and well.

Take “Philip Glass Buys a Loaf of Bread,” for instance. In this skit, minimalist composer Philip Glass goes to buy a loaf of bread. Two fashionable women spy him. Speaking and moving in the expressionless mechanistic repetitions that mark Glass’ work with opera/theater director Robert Wilson, they ask each other, “Isn’t that isn’t that?,” and answer, “I think it is think it is,” while one repeatedly mimes filling up a glass. Meanwhile, behind them the bakery chef has begun looping back and forth in a kind of Charleston, saying out loud what you might well imagine actors say to themselves in these kinds of parts: “Help!”

The piece-de-resistance is a visual joke, grand as it is silly. It culminates in a faux technical difficulty that exposes how ridiculous stylized theatrical conceptions can look when there’s a crack in the apparatus. This playlet is designed for the enjoyment of the same audience that goes to see Glass’ work across the street at UCLA. In that venue, we let our higher cultural responses take over. But here, Ives has a befuddled Glass (Arnie Burton) fall off the stage and then accost an audience member--”Do you understand this?” Climbing back up, he adds, “ ‘Cause we don’t.”

Sharing cultural references in a theater is a cheering experience, particularly when it involves communal acknowledgment of secretly lowbrow thoughts. Ives has a knack for it; he allows us to laugh at the lowbrow in ourselves by framing the joke in a smart package so that we don’t feel stupid.

And the show--set by Russell Metheny, lights by Daniel A. Ionazzi--is performed against a backdrop of round images that suggest timepieces. It happens to look terrific at the Geffen, which is the perfect size and space for it (all too rare in Los Angeles theater, where the houses tend to be too large or too small).

Each actor in the five-member cast--Burton, Jim Fyfe, Clea Lewis, Tom McGowan, Kimberly Williams--is an agile comedian. Under the direction of the experienced Ives hand John Rando, they have all paid attention to the show’s title. They work together like a well-oiled machine, in the way that sitcom players do, but with material you don’t have to be ashamed of laughing at.

Ives writes premises for skits like a professor of literature crossed with a subversive vaudevillian. “Words, Words, Words” finds three monkeys in a room at the Columbia University Primate Center, where an unseen researcher is waiting for one of them to write “Hamlet.” Their outfits (designed by Christina Haatainen Jones) are priceless--they’re just the kind of clothes people are always putting monkeys in, big buttons and Peter Pan collars and sailor suits with peek-a-boo underpants. McGowan, Burton and Lewis actually manage to differentiate the three monkeys, as they struggle to create for the oppressor.

In “Variations on the Death of Trotsky,” Ives poses a scintillating historical question while remembering one should never underestimate the value of a good visual joke. The encyclopedia says that on Aug. 20, 1940, a Spanish communist smashed Leon Trotsky in the skull with an ax. But Trotsky didn’t die until Aug. 21. What happened in those 24 hours? With the handle of an ax sticking out of his head, McGowan gives us a hilarious answer to a question no one has ever asked before in quite this way.

Some of the skits drag a little in the middle, particularly the one in which a professor (Burton) teaches Unamunda, da linkwa looniversahl (that’s Unamunda, the universal language) to an admiring student (Williams). In this skit, Ives seems too pleased with his own cleverness and not attuned enough to the audience. But the actors are extremely likable in it, nevertheless. This is not a terribly important evening of theater, and it will not change anyone’s life. But it offers a small, civilized, communal pleasure that Ives is almost single-handedly resurrecting.

* “All in the Timing,” Geffen Playhouse, 10886 Le Conte Ave., Westwood, Tuesdays-Thursdays, 7:30 p.m.; Fridays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays, 4 and 8:30 p.m.; Sundays, 2 and 7 p.m. Ends June 28. $27.50-$37.50. (310) 208-5454, (800) 678-5440. Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes.

With: Arnie Burton, Jim Fyfe, Clea Lewis, Tom McGowan, Kimberly Williams

A Geffen Playhouse production. By David Ives. Directed by John Rando. Sets Russell Metheny. Costumes Christina Haatainen Jones. Lights Daniel A. Ionazzi. Sound Jeff Ladman. Production stage manager Kay Foster.