Theater: Afterlife on Line One
ARE HUMANS SO WIRED that their devices will stalk them into the afterlife?
That's the question pensively — and often hysterically — posed by Sarah Ruhl's new dramedy, making its world premiere at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company.
Ruhl, known for lasering in on inner lives of out-there characters in such works as "The Clean House" and "Passion Play, a Cycle," here again centers her action around an everynebbish: schlumpy, edging-toward-40something Jean (Polly Noonan). While slouched over lobster bisque in a New York café, Jean witnesses the fatal heart attack of a stranger in a conservative suit, Gordon.
Touched and shocked, she becomes the de facto heiress to his constantly ringing cell phone. By taking the dead dude's business and personal calls, Jean also morphs into a sort of unofficial executor of his emotional estate, helping him, in death, put to rest a few of the demons that plagued him in life.
Acting as a corpse's receptionist first leads Jean to Gordon's vampy, campy mistress, an unnamed woman played with over-the-top va-va-voom by Jennifer Mendenhall. Besides hilariously demonstrating how frumpy Jean should sexily apply lipstick, she also intimates that Gordon's business might've been quite unsavory.
In short order, Jean's tech-powered odyssey leads her to Gordon's dysfunctional family. Over a cringe-worthy dinner in a neo-baroque dining room set straight out of "Alice in Wonderland," Jean meets his bitingly smart-mouthed mother (Sarah Marshall); his bitter, high-strung wife, Hermia (Naomi Jacobson); and his brother, Dwight, dorky yet endearing. Watching the bereaved, bitchy women spar provides some of the play's biggest laughs. But it's the oddly affecting romance that burbles up between Jean and Dwight that gives the show real emotional heft.
More zany proceedings follow: death by oven, visits to the Great Beyond, revelations about Gordon's icky line of work. But despite the black humor, the play seems sweetly optimistic. Yes, it's fine to weep for the dead, but even they would rather we yukked it up and got on with things.
Photo by Stan Barouh
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