Down the Rabbit Hole in TWS’ Trippy ‘Dead Man’s Cell Phone’

Most theatres and cinemas these days open with a standard caution to audiences that’s become almost trite: don’t forget to silence your cell phones, ringtones interfere with the show.

That warning comes before the ’ Dead Man’s Cell Phone as well—but it doesn’t mean you won’t be hearing a lot of cell-phone ringing.

In fact, it’s the very first thing you’ll hear, and the continual ringing drives the show’s plot from one strange dreamscape to another as an ordinary, banal woman becomes swept up in the mysterious life of the man named Gordon who has just dropped dead next to her in an empty café.

Gordon’s cell phone continues to ring, and the woman, Jean, can’t help herself from answering, which brings her into contact with a bizarre quartet of his relations: widow, mother, mistress, brother. Each appears both slightly deranged and oddly enlightened—their manic quirks a far remove from Jean’s drab day-to-day existence.

First-time TWS guest director John Gawlik has adapted Chicagoland playwright Sarah Ruhl’s black comedy in a repurposed in-the-round Cattell Theatre, featuring four ominous arches, the significance of which my be up to the viewer.

“It is trippy, and it’s non-linear, it jumps around, and [Ruhl’s] themes don’t go from A to B to C—she puts out these ideas and then comes back around to them,” Gawlik said. “She allows the audience to interpret what they’ve seen.

“In the round, [with] the central character of Jean, these environments swirl around [her], and in the scene changes we see her as part of them as her world starts to change and take on momentum. It’s been great to explore that in this space.”

Ruhl is a MacArthur fellow and a Pulitzer finalist well-known for exploring magical realism, death and the evolution of mundane characters into the fullness of life.

The play also occasionally dents the fourth wall, with at least one character directly berating the audience and others making references to the presence of spectators.

Which is why it’s perhaps appropriate that the actress playing Jean has incorporated a piece of her own life into the play. Linda Cunningham of La Grange takes the stage wearing a pocketwatch talisman around her neck—an antique of her grandfather’s.

“My character—she’s into memories, and the past and tradition, and I thought it would be suitable for her,” Cunningham said.

Like most everyone involved, Cunningham compares the play with Alice in Wonderland, with the eponymous dead man’s cell phone in place of a rabbit hole to lead a heroine on a surreal journey of self-discovery.

“It’s the weirdest play I’ve ever been involved with,” Cunningham laughed. “It’s unlike any other character I’ve ever played.”

The dead man himself, Greg Maurer of Romeoville, also compared the play to the well-known TV show Lost, saying that the show features layers and layers that it took even the cast months to peel away—and are now attempting to convey in a mere 90 minutes.

Then, of course, there’s the no-small-matter of accurately playing possum for an extended period of time.

“In a sense, it’s created one of the most unique challenges in the show for me, to play dead,” Maurer said. “When you’re playing dead, there’s a whole separate list of things that you can—and specifically can’t—do. If you have an itch on your face, too bad!”

And you can take it from the dead man himself: you won’t find anything simple in the trail leading from his cell phone.

“This is a weird play,” Maurer said. “This is not a play that you will just come and be entertained and then forget about once you leave the building. This a play that you will go and talk about at dinner afterwards, a week later you’ll still be thinking about.”

Dead Man’s Cell Phone plays at the on Sept. 29 and 30, Oct. 1, 6, 7 and 8 at 8:00 p.m., Oct. 2, 8 and 9 at 2:30 p.m., and Oct. 2 at 7:30 p.m.