After bringing down the house at the 2008 and 2009 Rogue Performance Festivals with selections from David Ives’ collection of one-acts, ART (Artists Repertory Theatre) decided not to reinvent the wheel for their fall show.
So they offered us “The Director’s Cut” of those same one acts– basically all of the one acts from the prior Rogue Festivals and one new one, for good measure.
Unfortunately, what works in the format of a 45 minute slot at a festival doesn’t always make for the very best in a full evening’s theatrical entertainment. Especially, when very little of the material is really new. And that, my friends, is making this a difficult write up.
To be fair, “All in the Timing: the director’s cut” isn’t the only rehashed show on the docket for Fresno theatre companies this year. . . . but I’ll write about that at some other juncture.
In this case, while the skits had much of the same humor and some of the same ebullience as their earlier productions, I just didn’t have quite as much fun. I enjoyed the same performances as last time. I appreciated what the new cast members brought to the table. The vignettes were, on the whole, successful. But the magic was flat, ya know?
And perhaps that is because I have seen most of this company do most of these stories most of this way before. I simply couldn’t see what else ART as a company, as an entity, had to say through this production.
And that makes me sad. Without that voice, without a new exploration of the material and what it can say, you’re just another company sticking to the hits and staying well within the lines. And I’m not interested in that.
For certain, coordinator Justin Red did a fine job with staging the different vignettes, although the lighting was occasionally dim, rather incomplete and sometimes garish against the yellow background of clocks. But in terms of actual content, there wasn’t much new.
The exception to this was Kate McNight’s direction of the additional entry of “English Made Simple”. Now, I am very familiar with that piece since I’ve appeared in it, so you would think that that would be the one I had the most trouble of finding something new. On the contrary. Perhaps because it was new to this company and the two actors in the sketch were also new(ish) to me, this piece was the most effective. It had a sense of urgency and a sympathetic quality that didn’t detract from its sharpness.
Also noteworthy is the always excellent “Variations on the Death of Trotsky” with its poignant ending.
But aside from these, there seemed nothing much that moved me. I enjoyed my evening, the show was dandy in terms of essential execution, I meant what I said when I congratulated the cast on the show– it is always hard to put up a show, no matter the material– but it was disappointing in that I didn’t get fed the way I would like to when I enter the theatre.
ART Fresno tackles more sketch comedy at this year’s Rogue Festival: “Parallel Lives” by Mo Gaffney and Kathy Najimy. I expect it to have the familiar buoyancy of their previous Rogue entries. And I look forward to leaving “All in the Timing” well in the past.

ART’s Rocky is the classic rock & roll musical with a fresh new style! Directed by Daniel Chavez Jr., the show will feature a live six-piece rock band and some of the best singers, actors, musicians and dancers in town.