Dead Man's Cell Phone Melbourne Theatre Company Review
Sunday, July 11, 2010
, Posted by Should I See It at 6:00 AM
Show: Dead Man’s Cell Phone.
Presented by: Melbourne Theatre Company
Directed by: Peter Evans.
Starring: John Adam, Daniel Frederiksen, Emma Jackson, Sue Jones, Lisa McCune, Sarah Sutherland.
Plot: A lonely woman in a café answers the ringing cell phone of a dead man. She is drawn into his family and his life.
Date Reviewed: 9th July, 8pm.
I won’t lie to you: I had an awful amount of trouble trying to write this review. Not because of time constraints or computer issues, but because of the play itself. Dead Man’s Cell Phone failed to excite any emotional response.
It’s easy to write on something you hate. A little more difficult to write on something you love. But when you have to write on something that you didn’t react to whatsoever, that is a challenge.
Last night’s theatrical experience was rather bizarre. The play never fully engaged nor really annoyed; it just WAS. I have never felt as passive in the theatre as I did Friday night, and judging by the tepid response of the rest of the audience, I was not alone.
I understand the play was trying to make a comment about our society; it’s just that I wasn’t entirely sure what it was actually trying to say. At first I got it: in this world of technology, does it really bring us closer together or keep us apart. Actually, the play isn’t clear on this point either. Ironically, it is through the ‘dead man’s cell phone’ that June is able to forge ‘human connections’, it’s just that the connections in the play are so ‘un-human’ that makes the point difficult to comprehend. The romance between Jean (Lisa McCune) and the dead guy's brother Dwight (Daniel Frederiksen), is supposed to be sweet, but the whole thing is so stilted (their love affair begins over embossed paper, seriously) that it never accumulates any depth that the audience can invest in emotionally.
Then, in Act II, something weird happens. Jean dies (well, I think she dies, or maybe she was actually dead the whole time, I'm not sure) and goes to a Laundromat heaven planet (no joke), and that was when Dead Man’s Cell Phone started to loose me. And the fact that Jean described that whole sequence as a Laundromat heaven planet indicated that the characters themselves actually had no idea what was going on. And when the characters in the play have no idea what is going on, how is the audience expected to follow? I'm still not sure what a laundromat has to do with heaven (or hell, or personalised heaven planets for that matter). The play is so busy being existential and surrealist, that it's not even sure of the point it's trying to male
The unnatural dialogue and the sheer force with which the play rams it ‘messages’ down the throats of the audience makes the play so alienating to watch, that it simply washes over the audience instead of inviting them in.
The performances were decent. Accents were passable, if not over pronounced and unnatural. Highlights were the dead man’s monologue and the beginning of act II. John Adam carried the whole thing with a bravado that actually made the awkward, stilted dialogue work. Lisa McCune was satisfactory enough, but her character lacked any sort of past. Why was Jean so lonely? Why did she lack connection with other people? She may be lonely now, but how did she get that way?
Dead Man’s Cell Phone is quite nondescript, really. It is neither magnificent triumph nor epic failure. It hovers somewhere in between, never really deciding what it is about or what it is trying to say.
Should I See It?
It’s not outstanding, but not a painful experience.
All photos courtesy of Melbourne Theatre Company.
Dead Man’s Cell Phone runs through to August 7.
Melbourne Theatre Company Official Site here.
