Lawrence.com

“People are yammering into their phones and I’m hearing fragments of lost love and hepatitis,” the dead man says, discussing his morning’s commute. The line primes the audience for an issue at the heart of “Dead Man’s Cell Phone,” an issue on which we are all experts: the degree to which cell phones and other technologies connect us and the degree to which they fragment our lives.

The play, directed by Ric Averill and showing at the Lawrence Arts Center, presents a cogitative discussion of the matter, a welcome voice in the chatter surrounding this prescient issue. A sparse, witty play, “Dead Man’s Cell Phone” depends heavily on script and acting, and the play delivers on both fronts.

A woman and a man are seated in a café and the man’s cell phone begins to ring. He does not answer. After many annoying rings, the woman finally answers his phone for him and realizes that he is, in fact, dead. Kitty Steffens softly but enthusiastically plays the considerate (to a fault), endearing woman, Jean. She ends up toting the man’s phone with her, eventually piecing his life together. This woman isn’t satisfied by simply letting his callers know that he’s deceased; she’s proactive, and takes it upon herself to console, flatter, and even lie in order to soften the blow of the man’s death.

Among the dead man’s first callers is his mother. Jeanne Averill plays a pugnacious, determined Mrs. Gottlieb. Averill expertly draws out laughs, enlivening the stage with her bravado. Her stern, half-mournful, half-capricious demeanor picks apart Jean’s good nature bit by bit, fueling moments of delightful discomfort.

Doogin Brown stiffly but assertively plays the dead man, the defeatist, but visionary Gordon, also situated opposite Jean’s compassion. This man died without getting what he wanted –– neither a fulfilling life nor his lobster bisque, and he reflects on the last moments of his mundane life with ultimate afterlife perspective, his comments a modern iteration of Emily Dickinson’s pessimistic “I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died.”

Natalie Liccardello, Will Averill, and Dianne Yvette play Gordon’s mistress, brother, and widow, respectively, and though the play would benefit from a bit more personality from each of their characters, their scenes –– and all of the scenes in the play for that matter –– are tight, immediate, and spin an effective yarn.

Perhaps most remarkable is the apt selection of this play over others –– it sparkles with evocative lines, it muses on how lovers and families navigate love in a world of chance connections and disconnections, it bristles with dark but pointed humor, and it touches on the values that have been eschewed or obtained in modernity’s brave new world. Simply put, “Dead Man’s Cell Phone” educates, imagines, surprises, and entertains in perfect proportions, and if the Lawrence Arts Center keeps bringing remarkable plays, it would be exciting indeed.