Stage Review: 'Dead Man's Cell Phone' offers ringing insights from phone

Rory Dale

Having no clues about the past of the man who died (Allen Busby), curious, anxious-to-do-good Jean (Pamela Poletti) answers his phone and leaps right into his tangled affairs.

Cell phones have long been a great anathema to theatergoers, ringing, as they tend to do, at the most inopportune moments. They distract, not just from the show, but also from the here and now of existence.

Rory Dale

Having no clues about the past of the man who died (Allen Busby), curious, anxious-to-do-good Jean (Pamela Poletti) answers his phone and leaps right into his tangled affairs.

The buzz in the pocket or the irritating ring tone takes people out of the current moment and puts them into another frame of mind. Somewhere, someone wants to reach them. Could it be an urgent matter? A medical emergency? The love of their lives trying to get in touch? Is the house burning down?

Ring Ring.

In a new comedy running at Circuit Playhouse, the sound of the cell phone is, for once, entirely part of the show.

Playwright Sarah Ruhl's instructive meditation on how we run our lives via the receiver attached to our collective ear leaves the audience with much to text home about.

"Dead Man's Cell Phone" opens in a café, empty save for two people. One of them is dead, though he appears to be sleeping. The other, a woman named Jean, becomes annoyed that the man's cell phone won't stop ringing. She answers it, and from that moment on becomes intricately entangled in the dead man's life.

Pamela Poletti plays Jean with a childlike sense of curiosity and an angel's desire to make things right. She tosses herself into the man's affairs like Alice through the looking glass, despite having no clue about his past.

Guest director Sean Paul Bryan, a former Playhouse intern, has realized a production as whimsical and dreamlike as the script itself. The set is inspired by the art of the Belgian surrealist Rene Magritte, with white puffy clouds on a blue sky as the backdrop, and characters that lean intentionally toward the artificial.

The dead man's family is a strange but ultimately fascinating group. His wife Hermia (Jennifer Henry) can't get past what he did for a living. His brother Dwight (Jason Hansen) is a geeky romantic with a fetish for stationary. His doting mother (Jeanna Juleson) is nearly insane. And among the man's additional acquaintances is a mystery woman (Stephanie Olson) straight out of a 1950s spy thriller.

Evoking Michael Douglas in "Wall Street," Allen Busby paints a splendid portrait of the man who died as an extreme kind of moral relativist.

If "Dead Man's Cell Phone" doesn't convince audiences to ignore the phone a little more often and appreciate what's in front of them, then at least it will reinforce the value of keeping in close touch with other people.

"Dead Man's Cell Phone"

Continues through Aug. 23 at Circuit Playhouse, 1705 Poplar. Shows are 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays and 2 p.m. Sundays. Tickets are $30 adults, $20 seniors and students. Call 726-4656.

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