Dropped Call

Tonight, I went to see the local Curious Theatre Company's production of the play Dead Man's Cell Phone. My stage managing friend was in that role again for this show. It also had among the cast an old college friend that I've seen only once since those days -- and who I've never seen in a theatrical production that I wasn't also in myself.

Dead Man's Cell Phone is an unusual melodrama by Sarah Ruhl about a woman in a cafe who answers a cell phone at a nearby table that won't stop ringing. As you'd guess from the title, it's because the owner is dead. The play then begins a fast-paced descent into the surreal as she hangs onto the phone and begins to insinuate herself in the lives of the people who knew the dead man. She tells whatever lies she think the people need to hear to get some closure, even though she knew nothing about the man herself.

The truth is, it's not much of a play. Before it's weird, it's simply pretentious. There's little profound to offer in the observation that cell phones have led to very superficial communications in daily life. And when this shallow point is made with 10-minute monologues, strange phone/umbrella ballets, and trips to the afterlife, it just gets tedious.

But though I basically hated the play itself, the production was commendable on many levels. The artistic set had an excellent and lavish lighting design that simultaneously made multiple locations credible while unobtrusively coming off like a painted canvas of its own.

And the cast was really solid throughout. In the lead role of Jean, Emily Paton Davies seemed credible and honest in every scene, even though the play does little favors in logically connecting the behavior within those scenes. As the "dead man," Gordon, William Hahn is saddled with opening act two with that 10-minute monologue I mentioned; he holds the audience's attention through every second, giving a layered and sweeping performance.

As the mother of the deceased, Mrs. Gottlieb, Kathryn Gray channels a great oppressive mother stereotype without actually making it seem like a stock character. And as Dwight, Scott Bellot (the college theater friend I mentioned) sweetly rises to the challenge of being a love interest in a fun relationship with the main character, even though it makes barely any sense at all on paper.

The bottom line is that I simply cannot recommend the play... which is really a shame, since the people involved (both those I know and those I don't) did some really phenomenal work with it. I wish this were being performed in rep, so I could go back another night and see them all put on a different show. Instead, I'll hope that all of them end up working on something else exciting very soon.