Review: Rabbit Hole by Dancing Cat Circle
by Michael Meigs
Rabbit Hole by David Linday-Abaires is a quiet play about loss. Becca and Howie were young parents six months ago when a swift series of random events sent their four-year-old son Danny running after his dog, just as a teenager drove down the street going maybe just a tiny bit too fast.
That back story is not shoved into your face. The action opens as Becca's loud, impulsive sister Izzy is sitting at Becca's kitchen table, telling a comic-horrible story about a confrontation that she had in a bar. Becca is folding laundry, tiny boys' garments, as she listens, fascinated, to Izzy crowing.
"You punched her?" Becca gasps, "Izzy, you mean that you were in a bar fight?"
The atmosphere is calm, familial. Only later in the conversation, with underplayed lines, are the accident and Danny's death revealed. Those clothes are headed for a donation bin. When husband Howie comes home from work, the determinedly normal conversations between the spouses speak worlds about a loss that is real and ever present.
The play is set in Larchmont, New York, and Becca's mother Nat is as garrulous and forthright as any other Jewish mom. She gossips and kvetches to her two girls, wandering through a disquisition on the well-publicized misfortunes of the Kennedy clan. The authentic ring of Rosalie Oliveri's portrayal and accent are hilarious. They're so good that one is momentarily disconcerted by the fact that the rest of the family and Becca's hubby Howie seem as mainstream white bread American Anglo as they can be.
Rachel McGinnis as Becca and David Meissner as Howie live together in guarded politeness, separated in part by Becca's earlier refusal to accept counseling or to continue attending a support group. Sister Izzy's exploits and Mom's attempts to push Becca into some sort of catharsis occur in a thoroughly normal succession of family encounters. They celebrate Izzy's birthday; they deal with Izzy's tales of a new boyfriend and her subsequent pregnancy. The couple struggles with memory, reminders, and efforts to lessen their pain. They put their house up for sale. The precarious emotional balance is tipped as the awkward 16-year-old Jason attempts to contact them, in an unreasonable attempt to atone for his accident and somehow to be friends.
The rabbit hole of the title refers to a fantasy story that Jason has written for his school literary magazine and wants to dedicate to Danny.
This is a delicate exploration of grief and healing, poignant and sometimes comic. Rachel McGinnis as Becca is subtle, perceptive, at times luminescent. David Meissner as husband Howie embodies vulnerability, courage and persistence as the bereft spouses seek some accommodation with one another. Brash, funny Samantha Brewer shows rising sap and a simple, crazy faith in the future. Rosalie Oliveri as Nat, the mom, is the far side of despair, having lived through the heroin overdose of the girls' older brother.
Michael Schnick as the awkward teenage driver, is completely convincing as the appropriately tentative, clueless and nerdy Jason. Jason's wistful story of a magic passage to a different reality furnishes the title, but it's a red herring. Linday-Abaires is writing not about escape but about accommodation with unforgiving reality.
The audience is with the actors all the way. This one could be a real weeper -- indeed, the New York Times review of the Biltmore Theatre production in 2006 begins with a tart observation that Becca's mom Nat might have made: "Rabbit Hole, the wrenching new play by David Lindsay-Abaire, [. . . ] inspires such copious weeping among its audience that you wonder early on if you should have taken a life jacket."
Director Stacey Glazer does not allow the actors to wring out any crying towels; the emotion here is internal and the action is deftly intimate. This couple elicits our empathy and we find ourselves rooting for their survival with one another and as a larger family.
Recommended, but you'll need to move quickly. The current production of Rabbit Hole plays only six times during City Theatre's Summer Acts! festival.
Review by Javier Sanchez at the Daily Texan On-line, July 14
Review by Ryan E. Johnson at Austin Examiner, July 23
Review by Barry Pineo in the Austin Chronicle, September 24
EXTRA
Click for program of Rabbit Hole at City Theatre
Click for NYT review of Biltmore Theatre production by Ben Brantley, February 6, 2006
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Rabbit Hole
by David Lindsay-Abaire
Dancing Cat Circle
First played at the City Theatre Summer Acts festival, July 9 - 19, 2009, produced by Dancing Cat Circle; brought back by City Theatre for performances September 16 - October 4, 2009. Directed by Stacey Glazer.
