Playwright David Lindsay-Abaire holds back
that information at first, but the fact
is that Danny is dead, and nothing’s
going to change that.
Danny is the central character is Linsday-Abaire's
"Rabbit Hole," which is making
its regional premiere in a quiet, measured
and very effective production at Curtain
Call Theatre in Latham.
It doesn't matter that Danny is never seen.
He hangs over the action like a cloud. A
cloud of grief, a cloud of sorrow, and maybe,
just maybe, a cloud of hope.
Lindsay-Abaire is best known for truly wacky
comedies like "Fuddy Meers" and
"Wonder of the World," but "Rabbit
Hole" is a drama that is relentless
in its examination of loss.
The play opens on Becca (Carol Max) and
Izzy (Joanna Palladino), sisters, in the
kitchen of a Larchmont home. Nothing seems
particularly askew, but details emerge piecemeal,
and the audience assembles for itself a
picture of a family without a child.
Four-year-old Danny, we eventually learn,
was hit by a car as he chased Taz, the family
dog, into the street as the beast was tailing
a squirrel.
The play is made up of many scenes like
the first, tense character sketches that
reveal shadows, light and darkness.
It is a slow-moving work that reveals its
rewards slowly, but is ultimately as satisfying
as it is heartbreaking.
The cast, overall, does excellent work,
and the show puts Max, CCT's founder and
producer, and resident director Steve Fletcher
(as her husband, Howie) back onstage, instead
of behind the scenes.
Joanne Westervelt (as Becca and Izzy's mother,
Nat) and Lecco Morris (as the young driver,
Jason) complete the ensemble.
Michael Beau's fantastic, multilevel set
becomes as much a character as the missing
Danny. The open roof beams hang like a skeleton
over the play, and the tiered floor plan
allows action to occur in multiple rooms.
Director Cindy Brizzell-Bates also seats
the audience right next to the actors, with
a few rows physically on the stage.
It's wonderful to see CCT's flexible space
used this way, and it echoes the adventurous
staging that regularly occurs at the Theatre
Company at Hubbard Hall.
CCT supplants its income by offering lots
of farces, whodunits and crowd-pleasers,
but the troupe is at its best when it tackles
art for its own sake, and this production
is well worth investigating … at least
for hardy souls who don't demand that their
entertainment be warm and fuzzy.
Do be warned that the play contains adult
language, but it feels real, not gratuitous.
And even if the text occasionally veers
near melodrama, Lindsay-Abaire should be
congratulated for his willingness to shift
theatrical gears from broad comedy to honest
domestic tragedy.
Michael
Eck, a freelance writer from Albany,
is a frequent contributor to the Times Union.
from
the Schenectady Gazette
Rabbit Hole offers
audience intimacy with grieving family - Curtain
Call's fine cast brings sad story to life
By
Paul Lamar
"All
happy families are like one another; each
unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
Leo Tolstoy's famous opening line in "Anna
Karenina" comes to mind when you meet
the grieving family of Becca (Carol Max) and
Howie (Steve Fletcher), the main characters
of David Lindsay-Abaire's play, "Rabbit
Hole."
In a finely paced production at Curtain Call
Theatre, directed by Cindy Brizzell-Bates
like a brooding chamber piece by, say, Shostakovitch,
this absorbing script takes us into the middle-class
home of a couple mourning the loss of their
young child.
Grief, of course, finally becomes the elephant
in the living room. These two dance around
the beast, alone.
The trigger to the immediate events in the
play is the announcement by Becca's younger
sister, Izzy (Joanna Palladino) that she is
pregnant. Coming eight months after Danny's
death, the news is unsettling, as is the meddlesome
behavior of Nat (Joanne Westervelt), Becca
and Izzy's mother.
And Yet one more person appears: Jason (Lecco
Morris), the teen driver of the car that killed
Danny as he ran after his dog, He has come
to apologize.
TRAGEDY
AND TEARS
Lindsay-Abaire, author of "Fuddy Meers"
and "Wonder of the World," mines
some humor here; after all, life goes on.
In Nat's rambling discourse about the cursed
Kennedy family and in the droll interplay
between sisters Becca and Izzy, laughter bubbles
up in the quiet house.
But the tone is somber, dealing with the familiar
issues of death: What do you throw out? Should
you call friends or wait for them to call
you? Go it alone or seek counseling?
The cast is excellent. Westervelt's Nat, all
flapping arms and lips, is a survivor of her
own trauma, and Westervelt makes us both exasperated
and touched by this woman.
YOUNG
TRAGEDY
In Morris' talented hands, Jason becomes the
most poignant character of all. Just starting
out in life, he will always feel responsible
for the sadness he has caused. A beautifully
nuanced performance.
Palladino is superb throughout. Izzy, the
also-ran to a sister who worked for Sotheby's
and can cook up a storm, improvises her life.
But she's constant in her loyalty to Becca,
and Palladino makes the most of Izz's confrontation
with Howie.
After Danny's death, it seems, Howie tried
to deal with grief by the book: He joined
a group, deferred to Becca's needs, and kept
working. But Fletcher's carefully modulated
performance with its quick, cheerless smile,
features a couple of dramatic outbursts that
reveal just how incomplete Howie's grieving
has been.
QUIET PERFORMANCE
And Carol Max turns in a daring performance,
one played so close to the vest that Becca
seems nearly catatonic. Becca's arms are always
at her side -- there are few gestures because
Becca has no energy to make them. Yes, small
flickers of resolve show; her temper flares
occasionally. But it's not until the heartbreaking
scene with young Jason that we understand
the depth of this woman's sadness: We, too,
finally exhale. Strong work by Max.
The seating for this show has been changed
to accommodate three playing levels, one of
which is on the floor, thus providing intimacy
with the audience. The actors' voices, therefore,
are conversational, not theatrical.
The lengthy scene changes are masked somewhat
by delicate piano music that maintains the
muted mood of the piece.
The title? Jason explains it. But if you thought
of the nightmarish world Alice falls into,
you wouldn't be far off the mark.
