In Sarah Ruhl’s Dead Man’s Cell Phone, mousy Jean (Mary Louise Parker) is unnerved by a man’s cell phone ringing nearby. She doesn’t know he’s dead, but she answers the phone anyway. Once she sees the guy is a goner, she keeps answering the phone, slowly trapping her in the residue of the deceased.
The goner is Gordon (T. Ryder Smith), a man made rich from human organ trading; although to judge by the lifestyle and hauteur of Gordon’s mother, Mrs. Gottlieb (Kathleen Chalfant), he was already well off. Soon, Jean encounters the rest of Gordon’s retinue: wife Hermia (Kelly Maurer), who’s more relieved than bereaved by his death, especially when drunk; an Italian mistress (Carla Harting) who looks like an extra from Fellini’s La Dolce Vita; and introverted brother Dwight (David Aaron Baker). After a dinner scene in which Mrs. Gottlieb’s vulgarity and quirks openly explode, Dwight and Jean discover a mutual love of stationery and head to Dwight’s job, where they can feel up engraved invitations as well as each other.
Parker does stellar character work with her twinkle-toed walk in high-heeled shoes, her wan face, nasal voice and her hallowed, wandering eyes. But the character is a cipher: Parker never questions why Jean goes on answering Gordon’s phone or immerses herself in his life. Unfortunately, Ruhl never questions this either. In Dead Man’s Cell Phone, she takes one of the digital age’s great questions—when we die, what happens to our websites, blogs, computers and iPods?—and gives us read-only memory.
Smith, whose long, pinched, WASPish face internalizes emotion instead of expresses it, is great casting as Gordon—who is offstage for most of the first act. Indeed, Gordon’s first line arrives at the first act’s final moment, when his character speaks into an intermission blackout. He does deliver a monologue at the beginning of the second act—a painstaking chronology of Gordon’s last day alive—that embodies what can be dazzling about Ruhl’s work, even if her thematic sense in this play is the same thing as a busy signal.
Director Anne Bogart’s staging is smooth as gin—watch her fold G.W. Mercier’s plot-accentuating set pieces into the action. Still, it was her job to ask Ruhl for definitive answers to legitimate questions about the play, and she demurred, preferring to pivot off visual cues—say, the tight dress Mercier gives Parker to walk in—rather than force the playwright to be clear.
Chalfant’s acting helps. Although detestable, Mrs. Gottlieb is real, even when running around madly near the play’s end, told by Jean that Gordon awaits her in the afterlife. This is the apex of Ruhl’s relentless whimsy: Jean has just been overseas to meet one of Gordon’s organ dealers, played by Harting, with whom she ends up in a Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon–style fight scene. Then Jean meets Gordon, alive but dead, who gives her the information that makes Mrs. Gottlieb go berserk. For all of this, Chalfant nevertheless invests Mrs. Gottlieb with a mother’s confidence in the inevitability of happy endings.
When Mrs. Gottlieb eulogizes Gordon in the first act, a cell phone goes off that sounds as if it’s coming from row G. Chalfant’s delivery of the following speech was priceless:
“Could someone please turn their fucking cell phone off? There are only one or two sacred places left in the world today. Where there is no ringing. The theater, the church and the toilet. But some people actually answer their phones in the shitter these days.”
I wonder if that’s where Sarah Ruhl is writing her next play.
Through March 25. Playwrights Horizons, 416 W. 42nd St. (betw. 10th & 11th Aves.), 212-420-8000 or 212-279-4200. $70.
The goner is Gordon (T. Ryder Smith), a man made rich from human organ trading; although to judge by the lifestyle and hauteur of Gordon’s mother, Mrs. Gottlieb (Kathleen Chalfant), he was already well off. Soon, Jean encounters the rest of Gordon’s retinue: wife Hermia (Kelly Maurer), who’s more relieved than bereaved by his death, especially when drunk; an Italian mistress (Carla Harting) who looks like an extra from Fellini’s La Dolce Vita; and introverted brother Dwight (David Aaron Baker). After a dinner scene in which Mrs. Gottlieb’s vulgarity and quirks openly explode, Dwight and Jean discover a mutual love of stationery and head to Dwight’s job, where they can feel up engraved invitations as well as each other.
Parker does stellar character work with her twinkle-toed walk in high-heeled shoes, her wan face, nasal voice and her hallowed, wandering eyes. But the character is a cipher: Parker never questions why Jean goes on answering Gordon’s phone or immerses herself in his life. Unfortunately, Ruhl never questions this either. In Dead Man’s Cell Phone, she takes one of the digital age’s great questions—when we die, what happens to our websites, blogs, computers and iPods?—and gives us read-only memory.
Smith, whose long, pinched, WASPish face internalizes emotion instead of expresses it, is great casting as Gordon—who is offstage for most of the first act. Indeed, Gordon’s first line arrives at the first act’s final moment, when his character speaks into an intermission blackout. He does deliver a monologue at the beginning of the second act—a painstaking chronology of Gordon’s last day alive—that embodies what can be dazzling about Ruhl’s work, even if her thematic sense in this play is the same thing as a busy signal.
Director Anne Bogart’s staging is smooth as gin—watch her fold G.W. Mercier’s plot-accentuating set pieces into the action. Still, it was her job to ask Ruhl for definitive answers to legitimate questions about the play, and she demurred, preferring to pivot off visual cues—say, the tight dress Mercier gives Parker to walk in—rather than force the playwright to be clear.
Chalfant’s acting helps. Although detestable, Mrs. Gottlieb is real, even when running around madly near the play’s end, told by Jean that Gordon awaits her in the afterlife. This is the apex of Ruhl’s relentless whimsy: Jean has just been overseas to meet one of Gordon’s organ dealers, played by Harting, with whom she ends up in a Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon–style fight scene. Then Jean meets Gordon, alive but dead, who gives her the information that makes Mrs. Gottlieb go berserk. For all of this, Chalfant nevertheless invests Mrs. Gottlieb with a mother’s confidence in the inevitability of happy endings.
When Mrs. Gottlieb eulogizes Gordon in the first act, a cell phone goes off that sounds as if it’s coming from row G. Chalfant’s delivery of the following speech was priceless:
“Could someone please turn their fucking cell phone off? There are only one or two sacred places left in the world today. Where there is no ringing. The theater, the church and the toilet. But some people actually answer their phones in the shitter these days.”
I wonder if that’s where Sarah Ruhl is writing her next play.
Through March 25. Playwrights Horizons, 416 W. 42nd St. (betw. 10th & 11th Aves.), 212-420-8000 or 212-279-4200. $70.
