By Sandi Masori in San Diego
Dead Man’s Cell Phone is a weird show. There’s no other way to say it. It starts with an absurd premise and just gets progressively more absurd. At a random cafe a woman is disturbed by the incessant ringing of a cell phone at the next table. She asks the man to answer but he doesn’t respond. Eventually, frustrated that he will neither acknowledge her nor answer the phone, she gets up to confront him and realizes he’s dead.
She takes his phone to call 911 and then begins to answer it as it keeps ringing. Unable to bring herself to say that he’s dead, she offers to take a message, and then begins to have full conversations with the caller as his coworker. The only problem is she has no idea what he does. For some reason she keeps the phone and keeps answering it. She even goes to his funeral and becomes involved with his family. From there it just gets weirder and weirder.
There are two Jewish references, one was that Jean works at a Holocaust museum, and the other when there was a mention of a sale to someone in Israel. I wondered if the playwright was Jewish, but a google search showed that Sarah Ruhl is Catholic, so I’m not sure how she chose those details.
Director Sean Boyd said that he has been wanting to stage it for a while because he just loves the way it starts out absurd and just spirals into more and more absurdity.
My friend Sasha Foo played Mrs. Gottleib, the mother of the dead man. Her performance reminded me of the late Catherine O’ Hara as Lydia Deets in Beetlejuice. Delightfully wacky.
Bethany Lee did a great job as Jean, the woman who answers the phone and becomes entangled in Gordon’s (the dead man played by Ty Smith) former life. You could really feel the awkwardness and uncertainty of the character in her performance.
The timing could have used some tightening. Scene changes had the audiences waiting a bit too long for the next scene to be set and begin.
But, seeing as how they only got into the space days before the performance, it’s understandable that some of the practical logistics still needed work.
It was staged in Trinity’s new digs in the Mira Mesa neighborhood of San Dieg0. They only just got into the building, and the space and the stage is three times larger than their old home in Mission Valley mall, so there’s some growing into the space still to do.
Boyd’s family helped him build the stage and seating with their own hands, leaning on his carpenter dad’s skills and advice.
The performance I attended had a full house, so the move didn’t seem to deter their audience, to the contrary, Boyd noted that in their old home it would have been oversold. And another perk of the new space, plenty of open free parking.
This was a short-lived show, with only six performances that wraps at 7 p.m. Sunday (tonight) so if you hurry, you can still see the final performance tonight. Boyd hopes that after they make some of the planned upgrades to the theater, he can bring back the same cast and restage it again.
In the meantime, keep your eye on the Trinity theater’s webpage to see what’s coming up next for them.
*
Associate Editor Sandi Masori covers the theater and food beats.