It begins with that bane of live theater companies everywhere: the persistently ringing phone.
But in Dead Man’s Cell Phone, at Brookdale Community College, the unwelcome noise is not only part of the show: it’s the catalyst that sets off a bizarre chain of connections involving Jean (the woman at the next café table, who answers the call when it becomes evident that the phone’s owner is very much dead) and various family members or acquaintances of the dead guy, Gordon.
Running for just one weekend beginning Friday, the 2007 play by Pulitzer Prize finalist (and MacArthur Genius Grant recipient) Sarah Ruhl comes to the stage of the college’s Performing Art Center, as the school’s spring drama production.
A cast and crew of BCC students and community theater veterans bring to life “the odyssey of a woman forced to confront her own assumptions about morality, redemption, and the need to connect in a technologically obsessed world.” It’s also surreally funny and touched by mystery, as Jean — a figure out of some Hopper-esque diorama — gets herself involved big time in the life of a man who left behind a lot of loose ends, and more than a few secrets.
Performances of Dead Man’s Cell Phone are Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m., and Sunday at 2 p.m. Tickets are $10 for the general public, and $8 for seniors, Brookdale employees and alumni (with current BCC students admitted for $5), and can be reserved by emailing [email protected] or calling the box office at (732) 224-2411.
