David Lindsay-Abaire’s Rabbit Hole was the dark horse winner
of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for drama—his script, about a couple
struggling to cope with the loss of their son, wasn’t even nominated,
but members of the judging committee shoehorned the work to a surprise
victory.
The script paints a subtle, powerful portrait of contemporary grief,
as a modern couple attempts to navigate the death of their child
without the comfort of religion or the panacea of easy blame. Becca
(Susannah Mars) and Howie (Duffy Epstein) have recently lost their
young son to a random car accident. The couple copes with his death in
different ways—Howie joins a support group, while Becca clings
tightly to a tragedy that she believes is hers alone.
It’s a script where much hinges on the abilities of the cast and
director to create a sense of strain, to convey the tension of adults
trying to keep their lives together in the face of a horrible loss.
Unfortunately, fineness of feeling doesn’t seem to be director Allen
Nause’s strong point, and he whips his actors into such a frenzy of
overacting that what should be a subtle and powerful show instead
careens disastrously between the overly sentimental and the
unintentionally hilarious.
Nause’s direction is problematic, but equally troublesome is Mars’
portrayal of Becca. The character is the linchpin of the production,
and Mars—though a fine actress—is simply miscast. Becca has
to be somewhat sympathetic, in order for the play to have any emotional
effect at all; but Mars’ character is shrewish and two-dimensional. We
see her lashing out at the people around her, but we get no sense that
behind her anger is a woman in real pain.
It’s hard to understate the extent to which Artists Repertory
Theatre has botched this one. It’s a mess: maudlin music (plinking
piano between scene changes notes remind us that what is happening here
is Very Sad Indeed); awkward blocking (the cast spends half their stage
time with backs to the audience); heavy-handed emotional peaks that
confuse volume with emotional intensity. It’s been a while since we’ve
been blown away by an Artists Rep show—here’s hoping they get
their act together soon, because with the talent and resources they
attract, they should be doing better work than this.