[NEohioPAL] Review of "Dead Man's Cell Phone" at Dobama

Bob Abelman r.abelman at adelphia.net
Fri Nov 5 02:44:52 PDT 2010


'Dead Man's Cell Phone' offers theatrical wake-up call

 

Bob Abelman

News-Herald, Chagrin Valley Times, Solon Times, Geauga Times Courier

Member, International Association of Theatre Critics 

 

This review appeared in the News-Herald on 11/5/10

 

 "No he's not.  Can I take a message?"

 

Playwright Sarah Ruhl has a way of using common expressions like this to call attention to invisible, taken-for-granted phenomena and reveal their significance.  Catch phrases are launch pads for the strange and metaphysical journeys of discovery taken by her clueless characters and their willing audiences.    

 

In Dead Man's Cell Phone, on stage at the Dobama Theatre, "no he's not" refers to Gordon, who is no longer among the living and, thus, not taking calls.  He has, in the opening moments of the play, silently passed away in a small café while enduring the last of life's many letdowns-getting lentil soup when what he really craved was lobster bisque.  

 

"Can I take a message" becomes Jean's mantra and mission upon Gordon's demise.  Jean, an unassuming stranger with no life of her own, picks up Gordon's ringing cell phone and, by doing so, picks up his life where it left off.  She is immediately connected to and absorbed into this man's social network and takes it upon herself to right his wrongs by reinventing who he was and writing herself into his storyline.  

 

The point of Ruhl's play is that the cell phone and other social media have allowed us to instantly connect with but simultaneously be removed from one another.  We are knowable but remain unknown.  We are present but not really there.

 

By allowing us to leave messages, cell phones suspend time.  By reaching us everywhere, cell phones warp space.  Even in death, our voice mail perseveres.  Can you hear me now?

 

The social and spiritual de-evolution created by technological advancement, suggests Ruhl, is absolutely bizarre, unnatural and quite disturbing.  In Dead Man's Cell Phone-a wonderfully absurd and very clever modern-day fairytale-she shows us just how bizarre it is.  

 

The folks at Dobama understand bizarre and do absurd up right.

 

Scenic designer Mark Jenks has created a wonderfully surreal and creepy landscape for this play.  Walls, walkways and furniture are all at peculiar and precarious angles, and there is a distorted sense of dimension as one location-a dining room, a storage closet, a bar, a church-shares the same space with the others.  The set resembles the whimsically nightmarish plane of existence experienced by a comatose Brendan Fraser in the otherwise forgettable film Monkeybone. 

 

Director Scott Miller creates a plausible world of absurdity, where every delightful irregularity, every odd moment and each irrational act is absolutely normative, but not to the point where it goes unnoticed.  As with Ruhl's writing, Miller's point of view is present without being overly pronounced. 

 

His creative vision is enacted by a top-tier cast who completely buys into this play's rules of engagement and their characters' quirks, and claims them as their own.

 

Tracee Patterson is magnificent as Jean.  She is so profoundly unassuming, so invisible, that she nearly collapses in on herself.  Jean is pathologically plain, yet everything Patterson does to create this timid character is complex and so very interesting.  Watching her navigate though this Wonderland of a netherworld and encounter all the peculiar others that populate it is captivating.  

 

The dead man's cell phone introduces Jean to Gordon's overbearing mother, Mrs. Gottlieb (Paula Duesing); his mistress (Dianne Boduszek); his long-ignored wife Hermia (Maryann Elder); and his underappreciated and emotionally gun-shy brother Dwight (Tom Woodward).  Every one of them is played to perfection-that is, they are genuinely bizarre and comedic creatures that never lapse into caricatures or lose their humanity.  Every performance is intriguing in its own way.

 

In Act 2, Jean is reunited with Gordon as the play's existential musings turn a bit too metaphysical for their own good-a common practice in many of Ruhl's other works, including The Clean House.   Fortunately, it is in this second act that Gordon speaks his mind and actor Joel Hammer's take on this loathsome fellow is delightful.  His diatribe on the lobster bisque is superb.  

 

As bizarre and essentially existential as this play is, its message is clear and has a familiar ring tone.  Dobama's presentation of it is provocative and certainly worth seeing.  Oh, and please turn off your cell phones and pagers before the performance.

 

Dead Man's Cell Phone continues through November 21 at the Dobama Theatre, 2340 Lee Road, Cleveland Heights.  For tickets, which range from $10 to $25, call 216-932-3396 or visit www.dobama.org.


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