All in the Timing Returns in Second Production by Attic Salt Theatre Company

If you enjoy listening to wordplay and erupting in side-splitting laughter, you won’t want to miss Attic Salt Theatre’s production of All in the Timing, a comedy by David Ives. It runs March 9–20 at NC Stage. The play contains several of Ives’ best one-acts that focus on language, the difficulties of starting and maintaining relationships, and the meaning of life.

Attic Salt Theatre produced the same play with the same cast in 2013 at Asheville Community Theatre’s 35below. Following the success it enjoyed there, the company is excited to bring the show to NC Stage. “Ives always seems to go for the biggest idea in the room, but there are no interconnections amongst the plays,” says director Jeff Catanese, who also serves as the company’s artistic director. “They all just have an extremely off-beat way of looking at the world that we all inhabit.”

The evening features seven one-acts and each actor plays multiple roles. In Words, Words, Words, for instance, three chimpanzees in a cage attempt to write Hamlet using typewriters. In another, The Universal Language, a man speaks only in his invented language to a naïve student.

“Having three actors as talented and versatile as Kirby Gibson, Scott Fisher, and Garrett Funk makes life easy in a number of ways. It makes it easy to schedule rehearsals, for one. But the real benefit is that I know how each of them likes to work and we can attack each new character appropriately,” says Jeff.

A simple set allows the acts to flow effortlessly from one to the next. “Working in a minimalist fashion allows for the focus of the audience to be on the characters and makes the comedy much sharper, in my opinion,” says Jeff. “It’s not tough to do a show like this if you have a piece that’s extraordinarily well written. Which we do.”

NC Stage is located at 15 Stage Lane in downtown Asheville. Performances run Wednesday through Saturday at 7:30 p.m., and Sunday at 2 p.m. Tickets ($14–28) are available at the door or in advance through the NC Stage box office at 828.239.0263 or online at ncstage.org.