Spring play time
BHS Theater to present 'All in the Timing'
The Brainerd High School Theater will present "All in the Timing," a compilation of one-act sketches by David Ives, as its 2009 spring play this weekend.
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The show, which involves about 30 students, will be performed at 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday and at 2:30 p.m. Sunday. Advance tickets may be purchased from cast and crew members or by calling 454-6282.
Ticket price is $5. Purchasing tickets in advance is recommended. Tickets also are available at the door.
"All in the Timing" is a collection of six short comedies, one short drama, spinning absurd tales of love, language, missed opportunities, music and monkeys. The play is fragmented, paradoxical, twisted and highly amusing.
Students in the Brainerd High School drama program rehearsed Tuesday for this weekend's spring play. Brainerd Dispatch/Kelly Humphrey» Purchase reprints of this photo.
"Sure Thing" portrays a man trying to pick up a woman in a cafe, and the sketch unfolds into an exercise of everything that might go wrong in such an encounter. Each time the conversation hits a dead end, a bell sounds offstage, which allows the characters to pick up at the point before things turned sour.
"The Philadelphia," which takes place in a diner, mutates Einstein's theory of relativity to explain the sort of maddening day in which even the simplest desire is frustrating. That means, as one character explains, that you've fallen into a "black hole" in reality. A man stuck in this strange state must ask for the opposite of what he wants in a restaurant.
"Words, Words, Words" shows three chimpanzees locked in captivity with three typewriters as part of an academic experiment based on the premise that "three monkeys typing into infinity will sooner or later produce 'Hamlet.'"
Brainerd High School drama students Carolyn Badger and Eric Boyles embraced as they looked upon Luke Gruenhagen during a rehearsal Tuesday for this weekend's spring play. Brainerd Dispatch/Kelly Humphrey» Purchase reprints of this photo.
In "Long Ago and Far Away," a young married couple argues about the nature of reality and becomes caught up in a bizarre scenario. The play begins as a couple is packing to move from one New York City apartment to another. That upward move brings the husband and wife into an argument. Gradually the conflict glides into surrealism. Time goes backward and the apartment itself becomes a principal character in a mysterious story. The theme of the play is disappearance, as in "vanishing without a trace."
In "Mere Mortals," three blue-collar construction workers, lunching on a girder high above New York City, play a kind of supernatural game of "Can You Top This?" One claims to be the grown-up Lindbergh baby; another the surviving son of Czar Nicholas of Russia; the third, a reincarnation of Marie Antoinette.
In "Variations on the Death of Trotsky," Leon Trotsky dies several times from a mountain climber's ax wound received 36 hours prior. There are several different versions of him living out his last day with the help of his wife, who has found a 1994 encyclopedia that describes the details of the event. What begins as a Monty Python-esque history lesson slides gently into a surprisingly touching meditation on infinity and mortality.
"Philip Glass Buys a Loaf of Bread," which portrays the composer doing just that, manages with hilariously composed rhythms and playing with words to capture Glass's fractured and repetitive musical style.