Delighted with Dead Man!

I have a confession to make.  When it comes to theatre performance, I'm a bit ... thick. In fact, I have a difficult time sitting down to watch pretty much anything that lasts more than 20 minutes, even a television show or a movie. (No, I have not been diagnosed with ADD - yet.) As an outsider to the theatre world, I find myself alternately under-whelmed and over-stimulated by what I experience during a staged performance.  Over the past few years, I have reflected that my aversion to passive entertainment has less to do with the performances themselves than it has to do with ME. As a musician, I prefer to use my ears more than any other sense to take in and understand information, and so the spectacle of theatre can be too much - the combination of light, sound and movement onstage either leaves my head spinning or forces me to disengage myself from a performance. I have told myself that I'm just terrible at suspending reality and left it at that. That's why I was so delighted and appreciative of Theatre VCU's performance of Dead Man's Cell Phone for letting me off the hook.

I'm normally that annoying person in an audience who is cackling alone during the most reverent or sentimental moment during a movie, drawing looks from my neighbors and elbows from my companions.  But Ruhl's script - beautifully executed by the cast - so well juxtaposes the gruesome and the hilarious that I had tons of guilt-free laughs throughout the evening. (Really, organ trafficking has never been so funny, and probably never will be again.) But what impressed me most about the show was not the exceptional delivery of the script's nuances - who would expect anything less from Theatre VCU performance students? - but the excellent use of space, color, and light on stage.

This show drew me in with its use of light - from the beautiful rectangles sliding across the screen at the show's beginning, to the versatile overhead lights that transformed the stage from cafe to dining room, bar, and PURGATORY, of all places.  In keeping the set minimalist and using light and color effectively, the show engaged me by focusing my attention during its most important moments, and with hardly any effort on my part.  I didn't have to try to believe Gordon's joy at the discovery that his mother does indeed love him - his brightly illuminated face showed his transformation from indifference and cynicism to love. His rapture was so tangible that I could have followed him right out the door to his heaven.

So congratulations to the director, cast and crew of Dead Man's Cell Phone for impressing this tough critic. Thanks for presenting a show that wholly charmed me, in spite of my very practical self.

Mara E. Smith