"Dead Man's Cell Phone"

I participated in a reading of "Dead Man's Cell Phone" by Sarah Ruhl. What fun to read the part of an espionage spy as the other woman and the stranger using different accents. You can almost hear the film noir music as Jean (the girl that finds the dead man's phone) gets herself into an adventure that might be in a Hitchcock film. The theme of the play deals with the ability of the phone (and the people who use it) both to unite and isolate. The phone becomes another character in the play -- reminiscent of the use of the phone in a Neil Simon play "Chapter Two”. The commonplace phone that we are asked to turn off in the movie, theater, and on an airplane becomes a character of transformation. There are several references in the play to “Carousel” in this oddball comedy. The song "You'll never Walk Alone” is mentioned several times and the idea that if there is one person on earth who remembers you then it isn’t over. The author reflects on the question of how will you be remembered after you're gone by entrusting the memory of a not-so-dearly-departed man to a woman he never met.