This outstanding production has professional written all over it, from the direction to the actors’ performances to the set and lighting design. To tell this sad tale of unspeakable grief, director Bob Pridham has assembled a true ensemble of actors, each of whom supports the others in performances so natural and so convincing that we find ourselves grieving their loss along with them.
First off, Chris Furlong and Roy Pancirov are to be commended for designing a set that lets us literally break through not just the proverbial fourth wall of the theater but all three walls of the Corbett dining room, simply by using two half door frames and two corners anchored by a pair of French doors through which Richard Hennessey’s daylight streams. That the entire plot unfolds in the dining room, around a spacious oval table, adds to the claustrophobic feel of the family’s grief and makes us feel like an unwanted guest—voyeurs, even. That the death of a child can wreak havoc on a marriage is well documented, statistically and anecdotally, and if that death is the result of an accident, there is usually more than enough blame—spoken or unspoken—to go around. Add to that different modes of dealing with the loss, and you have a recipe for relationship train wreck. Rabbit Hole involves the Corbetts, Becca and Howie, who eight months before lost their four-year-old son Danny when he chased his dog into the path of a car driven by a local teenager. When we meet them, Becca is preparing to give Danny’s clothes away to Goodwill and talks about selling their house while Howie wants to “try again” for another child; his watching videotapes of his son, and his subsequent rage upon discovering that Becca has taped over the one of Danny just before his death, put the lie to his assertions that he has in fact “moved on.”
Tensions are exacerbated by Becca’s younger slacker sister Izzy’s announcement that she is pregnant and the tactless chatter of Becca’s mother Nat, who goes on and on about the Kennedy family’s losses and the death by a heroin overdose of own 30-year-old son Arthur eleven years earlier. And the appearance of Jason, the teenage driver, first through a letter enclosing a short story he has dedicated to Danny and then at the Open House, affects the spouses differently, ultimately setting them on a path to comfort and, hopefully, reconciliation.
Sarah Pharaon and Rick Holloway are incredible as Becca and Howie. Their performances make manifest the various ways people deal with the death of a loved one. Becca is all business, clearing away any evidence of Danny’s existence in an effort to move on, suppressing her grief until she reaches the breaking point late in the play when she puts her hand across her mouth in an effort to keep the sobs from erupting. Howie, on the other hand, is still working through his grief and is not ready to let his son go. Upon discovering that his wife has destroyed the tape of Danny, Holloway’s Howie dissolves into entirely natural heaving shoulders and wrenching, gulping sobs. Totally forgetting that Pharaon and Holloway are actors, we want to come down onto the performance space to comfort these two people. Tara Cioletti is terrific as prospective mom Izzy, conveying just the right amount of slacker attitude without crossing into caricature. Just watching her react to an inappropriate birthday gift is a delight. And while Kris Andrews’ Nat is a woman you’d like to smack yourself (a number of offstage physical fights are recounted in this play), she reveals a poignant side to her annoying character when she talks about the loss of her own child. In a touching scene, mother and daughter realize they have more in common than they’d like to admit. Young Macauley Davis portrays Jason’s awkwardness and earnestness very well, especially in his scene with Becca. He’s all arms and legs, stammering and shifting from foot to foot, but the two connect emotionally over his description of parallel universes one reaches by going down a “rabbit hole” to a place where events can play out differently, perhaps more happily, from the way they already have. Think Alice’s descent to Wonderland through the rabbit hole in that classic tale.
Rabbit Hole could be a depressing play, but playwright Lindsay-Abaire presents us with simmering dramatic conflict, convincing dialogue—delivered naturally by believable characters—and a ray of hope to remind us what a well-crafted play should be. Rabbit Hole is a must-see for those who love good theater and acting.
Rabbit Hole will be performed Fridays and Saturdays at 8 PM, and Sunday, October 10, through October 16 at the Chatham Playhouse, 23 N. Passaic Avenue, Chatham. Parking is free behind the theater and the town has quite a few interesting restaurants for pre-theater dining. For information and tickets, call the box office at 973.635.7363 or visit online at http://www.chathamplayers.org/.
