All in the Timing

All in the Timing is a collection of one-act plays by the American playwright David Ives written between 1987 and 1993. It was first published by Dramatists Play Service in 1994, with a collection of six plays; however, the updated collection contains fourteen. The short plays are almost all comedic, frequently employing word play. High-school and college students frequently perform the plays, often due to their brevity and undemanding staging requirements.

The original six plays

• Sure Thing: A man and a woman meet for the first time in a cafe, where they have an awkward meeting continually reset each time they say the wrong thing, until, finally, they romantically connect.
• Words, Words, Words: Three chimpanzees attempt to write Hamlet.
• The Universal Language: A man and a woman fall in love while communicating in the invented language Unamunda.
• Philip Glass Buys a Loaf of Bread: A musical parody of minimalist composer Philip Glass.
• The Philadelphia: A man is informed by a friend that his frustratingly unlucky day is the result of an anomalous pocket of reality, called a "Philadelphia," in which he must ask for the opposite of what he wants.
• Variations on the Death of Trotsky: Revolutionary Leon Trotsky dies several times from a mountain-climber's axe-wound received many hours prior.

Other plays

• Long Ago and Far Away: A married yuppie couple, about to move out of their apartment, argues about the nature of reality and becomes caught up in a bizarre scenario concluding in time travel and suicide; this is one of the few purely dramatic pieces in All in the Timing.
• Foreplay, or The Art of the Fugue: Three miniature golf games taking place simultaneously, showing one man on three separate first dates.
• Seven Menus: Seven dinners at the same restaurant, showing the evolution of one circle of friends.
• Mere Mortals: Three blue-collar construction workers discuss how they are really the Lindbergh baby, the son of Czar Nicholas II of Russia, and the reincarnation of Marie Antoinette.
• English Made Simple: A young man and woman meet at a party and their immediate romantic attraction is presented via loudspeaker by a comically unromantic grammar lesson, while they struggle to free themselves from the banal constrictions of party talk.
• A Singular Kinda Guy: A monologue about a man who believes he is actually a typewriter.
• Speed-the-Play: A parody of the works of American playwright David Mamet; his major works are each lampooned.
• Ancient History: A couple discusses tradition and relationships before and after they hold a party; one of the few dramatic works in All in the Timing.