Putting one’s first full one-acter (structurally really a short three acter) up in a double bill against the proven comedic brilliance of David Ives was something of a gamble, but Celeste Koehler’s Class Act stands up well against the selection of Ives playlets from All In The Timing in the joint Berliner Grundtheater /NWTC production at the Tramsshapp this week.

In the end though, Ives’ talent for language dominated, especially in the sketch The Universal Language, in which Tim Lone directed an absolutely hilarious fast-talking performance from Fran Potasnik and Steve Anderson, the latter in particular getting a chance to shine that casting rarely grants him, as they study his invented language Unamunda (da linkwa Unamunda that is). She of course only speaks Johncleasé to start, but picks up Unamunda fast and after much kooch (but no slacks) they find themselves very much in amamor.

Probably beats learning Luxembourgish.

I have one quibble with this play which turns up, in related forms, in others of the night’s offerings. Just before the end of Language, the teacher Don breaks down at the height of the surreality, and gives away the real-world reason for his preaching of the language. It seems to me that weakens the whole point of the surreal, which should stay unexplained. We don’t want Ionesco to give us a scientific reason for people becoming rhinoceri (or at least only an insane one). But more anon.

The other Ives sketches chosen also concern two people establishing a relationship, and the language difficulties they have to overcome. The funnier and more sharply observed is Sure Thing, in which the couple meet in a café, the man entering while she has an empty chair at her table. From then on every time one puts a foot – or rather word wrong – something dings and they are thrown back in time one move until they get it right. Mistakes include saying one hates Faulkner, being over enthusiastic about Faulkner, not coming from New York, and worst of all asking what birth-sign the other has. That gets three dings.

Nathalie Jacoby and Timothy Lone were splendidly pacy and clear, which was all really the piece demanded. As far as I could see they nailed every nailable laugh.

The remaining Ives play, English Made Simple baffled me on Wednesday, continues to baffle me after watching the versions on Youtube, and no doubt will continue to baffle me. There is a voice-over (Ann Comfort, reliably clear and competent) and a couple worryingly named Jack and Jill (significant? Not significant? Who knows?) played by Kim Hermans and Louisa Graf. The loudspeaker announces various themes and the characters talk and go through motions.

Are the figures from a language learning video? An instruction manual in how to conduct a conversation? A real meeting being used as an example or a theoretical model for the socially afflicted? I don’t know what a director can do, in his province, to make it clear what is going on except to maybe use some literal stage setting and perhaps uninvolved characters not talking but setting the scene – to indicate for instance whether we are at a real party or a laboratory or studio mockup.

And so to the local entrant, Celeste Koehler, who had the funniest play, Goodbye Avis, at the 2009 Ten-Minute Play Festival. She has outdone that this year and managed at moments to equal the blissful surreality of Universal Language. Directed by Tony Kingston, the second act in particular is reminiscent of Ionesco’s The Lesson, that the NWTC put on in 2009, with a student arriving not here for her first class, but for an introductory dinner party to be confronted by a professor from Wonderland (Antonio Reis), who immediately asks her what she is doing there.

She also meets, or seems to, the professor’s wife (June Lowery), two other students (Clea du Toit and Robin Edds), a critic (Jessica Whiteley) and a character, Robert, described as a director, with allegedly rather unconventional ideas about mothers stemming from having been dropped on the head by one ten years before (Bjorn Clasen).

At least that’s what they start out as. But reality is not what it seems.

It occurs to me this is not so much Ionesco territory as part of Larry Shue’s kingdom, founded on his ability as in The Nerd and The Foreigner to build up nonsensical situations step by step. I don’t think the author her is at that level yet, but especially in the second act, she gets close. The first act however builds up very slowly, as Celia (Lena Hoss) fights with her mother Ruth (Elke Murdock), commentated by her grandmother (Barbara Hall) over her ambition to go on stage, as against other career choices offered. Unfortunately the exchanges are too wordy, each in turn waits for the other to speak, and the end result (no matter how fiery the words on paper) smacks more of a debate than a passionate family row.

From the second act on, in fact largely from Robert’s entrance, the action speeds up and the acting all around gets to be convincing. (In fact this was in general a good night for acting and direction.

In any case the first act family split has very little to do with the interesting and funny part of the play, the second act and its subsequent denouement in the third, which while funny is not as good as the second because we already know the reason for the apparent surreality.

Which of course brings me back to where I was earlier. Does it weaken a play/film if apparent nonsense is explained away by a providing a ‘sensible’ motivation for what is going on (as happens in The Nerd and in the examples here)? Will an irrational explanation do? Do we, in short, want Godot to arrive? Do we want a rational explanation for a man with curly golden hair, a battered top hat and a loose raincoat chasing a pretty girl across the stage honking a car horn?

Funny what goes through your mind when you’re laughing.

The show continues through Saturday February 11.

Friday 10^thand Saturday 11^that 8pm in the Tramsschapp (49 rue Ermesinde in Limpertsberg).

Tickets cost 15 euros (or 8 euros for students) and can be purchased viatickets@nwtc.lu or by calling 35 63 39

Underground parking available from 7pm at 72 ave. Pasteur (€2)

http://www.nwtc.lu/