my young sons to play. “Our little lost one,” it reads, “safe in God’s arms.”
Even though it ends on a note of hope and surety, the sadness of this
beautifully tender inscription (I can well up with tears just thinking about
it) is magnified by its posting at such a happy little place of swings and
jungle gyms. I suspect I’m not the first parent to ponder its reminder of the
perpetual possibility of loss.
That’s the idea at the heart of David Lindsay-Abaire’s emotional drama
“Rabbit Hole,” now in a solid Midwestern premiere at the Goodman Theatre from
the reliable local director Steve Scott. None of us lives forever, the play
points out. Enjoy your loved ones while you can. And if they go before you,
you’ll have no choice but to somehow cope with their absence.
All great plays are mostly about death. But very few of them are about the
death of a 4-year-old who chases a dog out into a suburban street and gets hit
by a car. More precisely, this widely and justly acclaimed Broadway drama
(soon to be a movie with Nicole Kidman) is about the aftermath of that death
— how the bereaved, suburban parents struggle to cope with their loss without
ripping each other apart in the process.
To some degree, this play is a frighteningly credible depiction of every
parent’s worst nightmare. The writer clearly understands that to have children
is to be introduced to new terrors in the world, fears that reside perpetually
in the recesses of the mind. And if you’re familiar with Lindsay-Abaire’s
prior darkly comic (and less mature) endeavors such as “Fuddy Meers,” you’ll
be struck by this wholesale departure in style. With the exception of a few
whimsical lines, this is a straight-up, naturalistic, inside-the-house,
life-as-it-is-lived drama, replete with the inherent strengths and limitations
of that mode.
But “Rabbit Hole” is hardly a maudlin, or a sentimental, or a patronizing
play. This strikingly wise script’s great strength is its ability to zero in
on a paradox familiar to most people who’ve been bereaved.
To move on inherently requires one to put away most of the things of the
lost person. But to put away the things of the lost person feels like an act
of willful erasure. Those tactile reminders — in this play they’re videotapes
of lost days at the park, special drawings, favorite sheets with robots — are
all we have left. “Rabbit Hole” is about the search for the bearable medium,
an essential, existential problem that’s well worth a couple of hours of
dramatic contemplation.
Lia Mortensen, who plays the role originated by the very different Cynthia
Nixon on Broadway, is no emotional well. Her emotions aren’t easily
discernible on her face. And for some of the night, her work here as a mother
with no one left to mother seems overly removed, flat and introspective.
But as the play goes on, you come to revise that opinion. It might owe more
to the Midwestern stoicism than this East Coast play ideally requires, but
Mortensen’s performance is an intensely truthful piece of acting that spills
out its buttoned-down heart late in the second act.
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I found Daniel Cantor, a slick newcomer, inclined to rush the play’s
quieter moments — such as staring into his boy’s empty room. And he’s not as
vulnerable as he needs to be. But he does shrewdly capture the coiled-up,
angry, decent, middle-age man, disempowered by the vicissitudes of life. And I
suspect the production, which only went so deep on opening night, will connect
more fully as the moments gel and the lead actors gain comfort with each
other.
From the grandmotherly Mary Ann Thebus (irascible but humane) to the
gentle, quirky Amy Warren (who plays the funky sister of the Mortensen
character), the performances of the supporting family players oscillating
around this couple are all you could wish.
Neither actress overplays her hand. Instead, they shrewdly combine empathy
with the pained reality that the stupid little details of all lives must
continue, even when there appears to be no reason for some to go on.
But the very best moment of the show comes from Jurgen Hopper, the hugely
talented young Chicago actor who here plays a troubled, earnest, high school
kid connected to this story. It’s an expression of his, rather than a line,
that sits with me as I write. It involves Hopper’s character sitting on a
couch and staring into the face of a grief he cannot possibly yet understand.
If you see the show — and you should — you’ll recognize it when it comes.
“Rabbit Hole”
When: Through April 15
Where: Goodman Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn St.
Running time: 2 hours
Tickets: $20-$68 at 312-443-3820
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