About The Book

Two mayflies on a date realize that they have a mere twenty-four hours to live and decide to seize life completely—if only they knew how. So begins Time Flies and Other Short Plays, a collection of thirteen witty and wildly original one-acts teeming with hilarious characters pondering life’s metaphysical questions. In these plays, a washing machine repairman falls in love with a perfect washer (should he tell his girlfriend?); two Babylonian blue-collar workers have to build the Tower of Babel; a man decides to become the painter Edgar Degas for a day; and two women fashion a Polish-American funeral breakfast out of absolutely nothing.

Zany, smart, and utterly fresh, this collection brings together all the one-acts from the off-Broadway hits Mere Mortals and Lives of the Saints. The follow-up collection of the award-winning All in the Timing, Time Flies is magical, eccentric one-act comedy at its very best.

Praise

“Ives [is] wizardly . . . magical and funny . . . a master of language. He uses words for their meanings, sounds and associations, spinning conceits of a sort I’ve not seen or heard before. He’s an original.”—Vincent Canby, The New York Times

“Hilarious . . . brilliantly calculated . . . The fragility of communication is pointed up with engaging skill . . . and the virtue of character.”—Clive Barnes, The New York Post

“David Ives [is] perhaps the funniest writer of short plays in America today.”—The Columbus Dispatch

“David Ives is the one. I cannot imagine a time when a dramatist delighted and surprised me more. . . . Cleverly accessible and humane . . . these postcards from the weirdo edge are a rare treat that only makes one wish for more.”—The New York Observer

“Delectable!”—The Wall Street Journal