Anxiety and Cell Phones
Ruhl’s Critique on People-Pleasing to Death.
Sarah Ruhl creatively tackles the two themes that seem to define this generation’s way of living. Anxiety and cell phones. Dead Man’s Cell Phone recounts the story its title implies: Jean, an ordinary woman, answers calls on a recently deceased man's cell phone. Ruhl successfully constructs a dynamic between our fear of death, our reliance on technology, and their deep-seated connection to anxiety. The audience is invited into an avant-garde satire built on Jean’s inability to disconnect from technology and face the truth. Ruhl’s ability to inject modern, everyday language into an absurd world creates a theatrical dimension uniquely resonant with today's society.
What exactly makes this play work? Jean's character in her entirety serves as the foundation. It all begins when a stranger's phone commences ringing—and ringing, and ringing. Jean simply cannot help but get up and answer it. Once she touches the phone, she embarks on a journey, deciding she cannot stop until the man is well. Upon realizing he will never be well because he is dead, she makes it her obligation to answer any and all incoming calls. Her fear of returning or relinquishing the phone breeds a deep dependence on this device. This hunk of metal becomes the physical embodiment of the dead man himself, and Jean takes it upon herself to keep that embodiment alive.
Rather than being honest with callers that Gordon has passed away, Jean assumes the burden of tying up his loose ends. Ruhl integrates technological anxiety directly into this inciting incident. The key to making this believable lies in Jean’s central personality trait: people-pleasing. Deep down, Jean is perpetually terrified of criticism and rejection, concealing that fear by constantly pivoting attention back to Gordon. To manage her anxiety, she tells callers the lies she assumes they want to hear to avoid conflict. She invents justifications for Gordon's poor choices, agrees to meet with strangers, and manufactures comforting, dishonest last words to bestow upon his grieving loved ones.
Ruhl takes this familiar coping mechanism of people-pleasing and elevates it through Jean’s unique language. When Jean agrees to meet with callers in person, Ruhl creates moments of classic dramatic irony—the audience knows what the other characters on stage do not. In Scene Two, one of Gordon's former lovers sits across from Jean, operating under the impression that Jean was his new mistress. After some initial sizing up, Ruhl’s distinct dramatic voice cuts through the modern-day chit-chat. Jean suddenly slips into an elevated, poetic way of speaking:
“Gordon said that he had loved many women in his life...he said that other women seemed like clocks compared to you - other women just - measured time - broke the day up - but that you - you stopped time” (20).
In this moment, part of Jean craves a sense of connection and validation that she feels can only be achieved through lying—telling this woman precisely what she longs to hear. Gordon simply happened to die in a café, and Jean happened to answer his phone, but the key players in his life now dictate her identity. Jean plays along with whatever role they assign her: the mistress, the coworker, or the loyal friend.
As the play progresses, Jean's unending loyalty to Gordon's phone remains her defining feature. Ruhl constructs brilliant satire out of the visceral anxiety produced by a ringing phone. The underlying logic suggests that if Jean fails to answer, Gordon dies all over again. The play succeeds because it pairs Jean's accessible, modern voice with subtle absurdity. The audience empathizes with her decision to lie because most people have told white lies to keep the peace. We forgive Jean for telling Gordon's mother that he called her on the day he died because we see the immediate closure that simple falsehood provides. Ruhl takes the impulse to people-please and turns it on its head by elevating Jean's dialogue far above the surrounding characters.
The engine of this play ultimately depends upon its absurdity. In Scene Five, the audience finds Jean and Gordon together in a surreal afterlife that mirrors the café from the opening scene. By this point, we have learned that Gordon was far from a good man: he had numerous affairs, sold organs on the black market, and maintained a toxic relationship with his family. Jean's anxiety compelled her to rewrite his legacy into something profound and exemplary, despite the stark reality of how he lived. Now that both are dead, Jean attempts to return to Earth using Gordon's cell phone. Being in Hell, the phone has no service, and in frustration, she "bangs it on the ground until she destroys it" (58). Ruhl uses this final sequence to comment on our collective addiction to connectivity. Only after Gordon's phone is destroyed and stops ringing does he finally rest in peace—a commentary on how modern society allows technology to dictate existence. When someone dies, life eventually moves on: their profile is deleted, their number is reassigned, or, as in Jean's case, people simply stop calling.
Ruhl’s vision is driven by our unwavering attachment to technology and the quiet panic it induces. The play's absurdity is grounded by Jean’s elevated diction, which feels simultaneously compelling and unsettling. Ruhl crafts a memorable avant-garde satire by filtering Jean’s emotional wants through Gordon’s cell phone. Yet Jean can only achieve true fulfillment when she drops the facade, tells the truth, and accepts the inevitability of mortality. The climax reaches a pitch of dark comedy when Gordon's mother throws herself into the fire after Jean tells her that Gordon is waiting for her in the afterlife. This dramatic escalation delivers a brand of satire that today's audience can recognize with a laugh of uncomfortable recognition. The dread of death and our reliance on technology remain modern crutches; Dead Man’s Cell Phone simply makes them easier to laugh through.
