All in the Timing: Six One-Act Comedies

SURE THING is a classic of contemporary comedy: Two people meet in a cafe and find their way through a conversational minefield as an offstage bell interrupts their false starts, gaffes, and faux pas on the way to falling in love. (1 man, 1 woman.) WORDS, WORDS, WORDS recalls the philosophical adage that three monkeys typing into infinity will sooner or later produce HAMLET and asks: What would monkeys talk about at their typewriters? (2 men, 1 woman.) THE UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE brings together Dawn, a young woman with a stutter, and Don, the creator and teacher of Unamunda, a wild comic language. Their lesson sends them off into a dazzling display of hysterical verbal pyrotechnics—and, of course, true love. (2 men, 1 woman.) PHILIP GLASS BUYS A LOAF OF BREAD is a parodic musical vignette in trademark Glassian style, with the celebrated composer having a moment of existential crisis in a bakery. (2 men, 2 women.) THE PHILADELPHIA presents a young man in a restaurant who has fallen into "a Philadelphia," a Twilight Zone-like state in which he cannot get anything he asks for. His only way out of the dilemma? To ask for the opposite of what he wants. (2 men, 1 woman.) VARIATIONS ON THE DEATH OF TROTSKY shows us the Russian revolutionary on the day of his demise, desperately trying to cope with the mountain-climber's axe he's discovered in his head. (2 men, 1 woman.)