There is a moment in the second act of David Lindsay-Abaire’s
Rabbit Hole, now playing at Beowulf Alley, when the characters,
and the play itself, let go of their tension for a first tentative
moment.
It’s almost magical, because suddenly, in the audience, you can feel
yourself begin to breathe freely again. It’s like the beginning of
healing.
Healing is elusive in Lindsay-Abaire’s harrowing tale, winner of the
Pulitzer Prize for drama in 2007. The play centers on Becca and Howie,
a couple living in a comfortable suburban home outside of New York
whose world was turned upside down when their 4-year-old son was struck
and killed by a teenage driver.
The accident happened some months before the beginning of the play,
and the grieving parents must now figure out how to get on with their
lives; they cope in separate ways.
Played by Nell Summers, Becca is an emotional porcupine, with raw,
exposed nerves. (Cynthia Nixon won a Tony for her performance of Becca
on the New York stage.) Brush her the wrong way (and it’s hard not to),
and the barbs come out. Any human closeness seems to open the wounds of
her grief.
Gabriel Nagy, as Howie, comes across at first as the more
emotionally balanced of the two. He is attending a support group, and
he’s able to carry on a conversation without it always being about his
son beneath the surface. But he also compulsively watches home videos
of his son after his wife is asleep, and he may or may not be seeking
the intimacy he is not finding at home elsewhere. As Becca observes,
Howie is not really in a better place than she is—just a
different one.
Nagy paints Howie as a man who may be hurting deeply, but who
doesn’t spend much time in self-examination. His broad gestures and
booming voice are less telling of his inner life than his overreactions
to minor events, such as learning that his mother-in-law is overfeeding
the family dog.
The weakest moment in an otherwise confident performance comes when
Howie’s defenses are broken down, revealing the train-wreck inside.
Nagy doesn’t handle this scene with the vulnerability needed to really
open Howie’s heart to the audience, but the moment passes quickly.
As Becca, Summers has the difficult task of winning empathy for a
character who is not pleasant; she is only partly successful. She would
have been better served had director Sara Falconer directed the
proceedings with a lighter touch, allowing her character to toss out
handfuls of razor blades rather than engaging in a perpetual knife
fight. The problem is not that Summers isn’t up to the task—her
pain feels very real—but it’s exhausting to watch as each trigger
tears her open.
Her performance turns brilliant, however, in the second act, after
the unexpected appearance of Jason, the teenage driver in the fatal
accident. Played by Ian Mortensen with an endearingly loose-limbed,
eager-to-please earnestness, Jason is looking for redemption as well.
Or perhaps he’s seeking condemnation—just some way to ease his
own feelings of guilt, something to bring closure.
Unexpectedly, it is Howie who flies off the handle when Jason shows
up, while Becca is open to hearing what he has to say. This marks the
beginning of her healing, and Summers’ transformation is understated
but remarkable.
As cathartic as this whole journey is, the evening is more than just
an emotional marathon due in large part to the supporting characters.
Izzy is Becca’s bohemian younger sister. She is exuberant, unafraid to
say what she thinks and pregnant by her musician boyfriend. Nat is the
mother of the two sisters, though she seems more related to Izzy than
Becca. Always quick with a story or an opinion, Nat also carries within
her the tragic loss of a child—a drug-addicted son who committed
suicide 15 years before.
Becca and Howie are the heart of the drama, but Izzy and Nat keep it
alive. Played with brio by Kristina Sloan and Martie van der Voort,
they bring welcome laughs, cross boundaries and ask questions that more
sensitive people might avoid. They inject life into a play about coping
with death, and with Becca in the middle, they create a virtual
timeline, from birth, to loss, to acceptance.
Dave Sewell’s suburban-home set is almost a character unto itself.
It marks the limits of Becca’s world for most of the play, serving as
both a shelter and a prison. It is tastefully furnished, but neat to
the point of looking unlived-in. Behind the living room, where an angry
painting hangs on the wall, lies the isolated, claustrophobic room of
the family’s lost child.
There is much pain in this play, but it is not a tragedy: Rabbit
Hole is about what comes after a tragedy, and in the end,
what lies through the rabbit hole is the strength to move forward, one
step at a time.
This article appears in Nov 12-18, 2009.