Review: A DEAD MAN'S CELL PHONE AT AS220 by Through The Glass Theatre.

Sarah Ruhl’s plays walk a tightrope between the real and the surreal, often gazing into the absurd with disarming sincerity. Fortunately, Through The Glass Theatre is right at home in that liminal space. Their earnest, straightforward staging of Dead Man’s Cell Phone lets Ruhl’s quirky meditation on death, disconnection, and intimacy unfold with pathos and wit.

Through The Glass Theatre has been active for several years with smaller works, and this leap to a full-length play is a smart one. Ruhl’s gentle farce fits the AS220 black box and this ensemble’s sensibility perfectly.

Dead Man’s Cell Phone premiered in 2007 at D.C.’s Woolly Mammoth Theatre before moving to Playwrights Horizons in New York. The play was a finalist for the Helen Hayes Award and helped cement the reputation of playwright Sarah Ruhl, a Pulitzer Prize nominee, MacArthur “Genius” recipient, and proud alum of Brown University’s MFA program.

The play opens in a quiet café, where Jean (Ricci Mann, whose befuddled charm is delightful), becomes increasingly irritated by a stranger's phone that won’t stop ringing. The stranger, Gordon (Mario K Sasso, whose Act II monologue is a standout), has died mid-lunch, and Jean’s decision to answer his phone pulls her into the strange orbit of his complicated life: a grim mother Mrs. Gottlieb (a delightfully frosty Lucid Clairvoyant), a mysterious mistress (Jhoira Walsh, who wields a mean saxophone), a put-upon brother Dwight (Kurt Nelson, whose charm is magnetic), and brittle widow Hermia (Rachel Hanauer, who gives a tightly wound performance). 

Jean, seeking connection, begins weaving herself into Gordon’s story by spinning fictions about their supposed relationship (which actually amounted to a casual glance over a bowl of soup.) What follows is a darkly comic carousel of grief, identity, and the ways technology distorts intimacy. Revelations and alliances ensue, and there is gunplay, lobster bisque, and a (tastefully off-stage) self immolation.

Director Olivia M. Sahlin keeps the tone restrained and the pacing clean; they let the action breathe, and there's no attempt to oversell the humor, trusting the script's innate strangeness. The very simple black-box set uses a few simple props to suggest the larger world. One lovely touch is the set for Dwight's stationery store, created out of two interlocking walls of cardboard Bankers Boxes, whose dovetail nicely thematizes Dwight and Jean's burgeoning relationship.

It’s a welcome debut for a company stepping into longer-form work, and if this production is any indication, we can look forward to more thoughtful, off-kilter, and emotionally resonant work from Through The Glass in the future.

Dead Man’s Cell Phone, Directed by Olivia M. Sahlin. AS220’s Black Box at 95 Empire St. Providence, RI from March 27 to April 6.  More information is available on the theater website: http://www.throughtheglasstheatre.com Tickets online or at the door; sliding scale $20-$40. Ticket link: https://www.zeffy.com/en-US/ticketing/dead-mans-cell-phone

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