BWW Reviews: Profile Theatre's DEAD MAN'S CELL PHONE Rings with Laughter and Truth

What would you do if you were sitting in a café, and you realized the person at the next table was dead, and his cell phone wouldn't stop ringing? That is merely the first of many strange situations in which Jean (played by Dana Millican) finds herself in multi-award-winning playwright Sarah Ruhl's Dead Man's Cell Phone, now playing at Profile Theatre.

Of course, she picks up the phone, a decision which leads her along a twisted path that includes the man's (Gordon, played by Don Kenneth Mason) home, a stationary store, South Africa, and a quirky afterlife planet where you have only one set of clothes (what you died in) and get to do laundry only once a week. It's an unpredictable, and funny, ride.

The play is about our relationship with technology-both the good and the bad. It explores how technology can bring us together, as well as how it can really get in the way, for example, when we are unable to resist a ringing cell phone, even mid-smooch. But it is also about loneliness and our need for human connection. Jean imagines Gordon is a good man (which he isn't), and she inserts herself into the life of his family by making up a fictional work relationship with him. She tells a series of kindly meant lies to comfort his mother, brother, wife, and mistress, and in the process not only becomes involved in his unsavory business dealings, but also develops real human connections with the other characters. It is a play about technology, but ultimately it is a play about love.

The stars of the production, directed by Profile Theatre's Artistic Director Adriana Baer, are the actors. Millican is excellent as the very human Jean-it is easy to picture yourself making the same choices along the way, and eventually ending up in an afterlife laundromat of your very own. Don Kenneth Mason flips easily between the smooth-but-unappealing Gordon and the slightly-bumbling-but-endearing Dwight. Patricia Hunter is hysterical as Gordon's and Dwight's mother, Mrs. Gottlieb (who gets to say the best line of the show: "You're comforting, like a very small casserole. Has anyone ever told you that?"). The standout, however, is Dana Green, who plays both Gordon's wife, Hermia, and his mistress, Other Woman. She is fantastic, and her performance is worth the ticket price on its own.

There are also three ensemble actors (Jonathan Hernandez, Shawna Holt, and Jake Turner), who turn changing the sets into stylized performances of movement and dance. The effect of this is mixed: it contributes to the feeling that the world the characters inhabit is not quite like ours, but it also slows down the pacing of a production that is not speedy to begin with. One of the laments in the play is that no one is ever really quiet anymore. Perhaps to combat that feeling, Baer provides us with plenty of quiet time.

If you struggle over the proper place for technology in your life, or are annoyed by constantly ringing cell phones (and really, who isn't?), you will find a lot to like, and to laugh at, in Dead Man's Cell Phone.

Photo by David Kinder.

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