The world according to David Ives is a very add place, and his plays constitute a virtual stress test of the English language -- and of the audience's capacity for disorientation and delight. Ives's characters plunge into black holes called "Philadelphias, " where the simplest desires are hilariously thwarted. Chimps named Milton, Swift, and Kafka are locked in a room and made to re-create Hamlet. And a con man peddles courses in a dubious language in which "hello" translates as "velcro" and "fraud" comes out as "freud."At once enchanting and perplexing, incisively intelligent and side-splittingly funny, this original paperback edition of Ives's plays includes "Sure Thing, " "Words, Words, Words, " "The Universal Language, " "Variations on the Death of Trotsky, " "The Philadelphia, " "Long Ago and Far Away, " "Foreplay, or The Art of the Fugue, " "Seven Menus, " "Mere Mortals, " "English Made Simple, " "A Singular Kinda Guy, " "Speed-the-Play, " "Ancient History, " and "Philip Glass Buys a Loaf of Bread.