Rabbit Hole

Rabbit Hole
By David Lindsay-Abaire. Villanova Players. Director: Andrew Heron. The Theatre, Morningside TAFE, Brisbane, 29 August – 13 September, 2014

Rabbit Hole is a very good and well-written contemporary play on a subject we have seen frequently dramatised on TV - how a family deals with the accidental death of a child. In fact the subject is common fodder for the nightly news programs and tabloid journalism. But playwright David Lindsay-Abaire’s take on it is non-exploitative, taking us inside the characters’ grief and how each of them cope with it in different ways.

The play, a recipient of the Pulitzer Prize in 2007, won a best-actress award for Cynthia Dixon in the role of Becca in its Broadway outing and an Academy Award nomination for Nicole Kidman in the same role in the movie version, and it’s around this key role that the drama revolves. Becca, a former Sotheby’s employee, is a stay-at-home mum, and when her 4-year-old son is killed in a car accident, her whole reason for being is called into question. In Villanova’s production Jacqueline Kerr gave a nicely nuanced and natural performance in this pivotal role which was only marred by the fact that her delivery was so low-key at times she could barely be heard past the first row.

As her husband Howie, Dan Kennedy was clearly a man suffering internally and trying his best to cope with his wife who continually rejected his advances both caring and amorous. His anger at her accidently taping over a video of their son was tellingly effective. Meagan Lawson was powerfully strong as the extroverted younger and newly pregnant sister Izzy, while Villanova veteran Mary Woodall’s crass, funny, and no-nonsense mother Nat was uncannily believable. Shane Fell’s portrayal of Jason, the boy who was driving the car that killed the child, had a nice empathy, particularly in the reading of his letter to the parents.

Leo Bradley’s set of the family’s middle-income home worked well, with first-time director Andrew Heron’s clear understanding of the script evident, even if his cast never played it with American accents.

Marriages very rarely survive a tragedy such as this and in this case there was no clear happy ending, but we did get a glimmer of hope that Becca and Howie may pull-through as they reached for each others’ hands as the lights faded. It was a fitting finale to an engrossing play.

Peter Pinne     

Images: Ian Colley Photography

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