Rabbit Hole

The Sunday Age

Sunday March 18, 2007

Bill Perrett

Rabbit Hole

To April 7. Red Stitch Actors Theatre, rear 2 Chapel Street, St Kilda.

Tel: 9533 8083. $30/$20.

3.5/5

There's nothing extraordinary about the storyline of David Lindsay-Abaire's play. A couple, Becca and Howie (Kat Stewart and David Whiteley), have lost their four-year-old son, Danny, in a car accident. Their lives have become a full-time effort to cope with that intolerable fact, while maintaining some appearance of normalcy. Becca's family, her sister Izzy (Erin Dewar) and her mother Nat (Jenny Lovell), try to help, but they are as awkward and out of their depth as people often are in such situations. Tragedy doesn't necessarily make sages of us. They are, however, decent and caring, and that should and does count for a lot.

Lindsay-Abaire's script is an admirably real and unsentimental portrayal of grief and its corrosive effects. The dialogue is sharply intelligent, revealing the unsaid and unsayable under its surfaces. There are some structurally clunky aspects; there's something a little too obvious about the reversed directions of the sisters' lives, but even those are occasions for wry humour. What really distinguishes the play is the character of the young man, Jason (Martin Sharpe), the driver of the car that killed Danny. Like Becca's family, he's not sure how to act in the circumstances, but his attempts form a remarkable picture of courage and humanity.

Even and high-quality performances from the cast: Stewart and Whiteley have just the right pitch in the central roles, and Dewar's Izzy grows in assurance. Lovell shows the same accomplishment as she did as the mother in 2004's Iron. Sharpe is impressive in a role that needs to convey a good deal more than is contained in its lines. A fine christening for the company's revamped quarters.

(Colette Mann will replace Jenny Lovell from Wednesday.)

© 2007 The Sunday Age

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