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DEAD MAN'S CELL PHONE. By Sarah Ruhl. Directed by Bart DeLorenzo. South Coast Repertory Theater, Costa Mesa, CA. 27 September 2008.
Dead Man's Cell Phone is the latest offering from Sarah Ruhl, who is fast making a name for herself as a writer of insouciant though nevertheless trenchant comedies. Following The Clean House, which was a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize, and Ruhl's designation as a MacArthur Fellow in 2006, Dead Man's Cell Phone opened to generous enthusiasm; its Southern California debut at the South Coast Repertory Theater in Costa Mesa was the fourth production of the play since its world premiere in 2007. Dead Man's Cell Phone, which explores the fragmentation of conversations, voices, and lives, moves irreverently among subjects like mortality and memory, the selling of body parts, obsession with stationery paper, lobster bisque, the afterlife, and, of course, the eponymous cell phone. This production of Dead Man's Cell Phone was distinctly surrealistic in its incongruous, comic situations, duologic and monologic structure, scenography, and direction, offering a humorous though still penetrating critique of contemporary society's somewhat feckless struggle for connection.
The play's affinity with surrealism is apparent from the first scene, which reveals two characters sitting in a café: Jean (played by Margaret Welsh), facing forward and loudly finishing her lobster bisque, and Gordon (Lenny Von Dohlen), facing away from the audience, slumping slightly to his left. When Gordon's cell phone unleashes its harsh trilling and he doesn't answer, Jean goes through several stages of response in her effort to grasp the finality of his condition: assuming rudeness, believing that...