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http://www.omniture.com --> Sections Home Page Local News AP News Blogs Archives Business Classifieds Event Calendar Forums Life Opinion Obituaries Multimedia Photo Gallery Readers Photo Gallery Sports Tempo Weather Road Cams Special Coverage 2006 Britt Festivals --> Shop Our Valley AutoFinder HomeFinder JobFinder Search Our Valley Special Sections Distinctly Northwest Readers' Choice Homelife Magazine Joy Magazine Oregon Golf Info Oregon Wine Info Other Publications Local Links Ashland News eSouthernOregon Newspapers In Education Personals Moving Here Movie Listings TV Listings Volunteer Customer Service Advertise With Us Media Kit Place Classified Ad Contact Us FAQ's Home Delivery Site Map --> Email Story to a Friend February 28, 2007 Howie (Bill Geisslinger) tries to recapture romance with his wife, Becca (Robin Goodrin Nordli), in the Oregon Shakespeare Festival production of �Rabbit Hole.� (OSF / David Cooper) 'Rabbit Hole' maps the terrain of grief OSF family drama's depiction of loss shows the painful search for solace after a child's death By BILL VARBLE Mail Tribune David Lindsay-Abaire is master of a certain kind of darkly humorous little play about characters who feel like flukes of the universe. In "Fuddy Meers," it was a woman who woke up each day with a blank slate where her memory should be. In "Kimberly Akimbo," it was a 16-year-old girl with a disease that made her age at four-and-a-half times the normal rate. In "Rabbit Hole," Lindsay-Abaire has abandoned quirky premises and imagined the saddest thing you can think of: the death of a child. Four-year-old Danny was killed by a car when he ran into the street after the family dog, and parents Becca and Howie are lost in conflicting hells of bottomless grief. It sounds like a TV movie of the week, but it is more than that. The writing is intelligent and unsentimental. There are gently comic moments, especially in the first act. And Lindsay-Abaire gives the characters complicated conflicts and provides no easy way out. Add a director who believes in the story, James Edmondson (who also directed the Oregon Shakespeare Festival's "Fuddy Meers" in 2001), and several of the OSF's best actors, and stage the play in the OSF's intimate New Theatre, where it opened Sunday afternoon, and you have an old-fashioned, realistic, domestic drama with a crystalline emotional arc. Becca's (Robin Goodrin Nordli) world has been turned upside down by Danny's death eight months ago. She can find no solace in organized religion nor the kind of support group her husband, Howie (Bill Geisslinger), has been attending. Nor does it help that mom Nat (Dee Maaske) and sister Izzy (Tyler Layton) are self-absorbed and yak about their own stuff. Advertisement While Howie talks about his pain at group and watches videos of Danny and wants to keep the dog, Becca finds these reminders of her dead son unbearable. She packs his clothes and strips his room and decides she and Howie should sell the house. Even when Howie approaches Becca romantically she cannot put her pain aside. In a sense the protagonist here is the family, grieving people united in an interlocking pattern of tension and love. But the story is finally Becca's. And Nordli inhabits her so thoroughly that there are moments you almost can't stand to look at her, as if you might see too much private pain. Izzy's loosey-goosey life hasn't been up to Howie and Becca's yuppie standards. She laughs off having been in a bar fight with the ex-girlfriend of the musician by whom she's pregnant. But Layton endows her with a common-sense resilience that is richly human, and with surprising growth. Nat's well-meaning but ill-considered attempts to find meaning in the death of a child include a hilarious ramble on the "curse" of the Kennedy family. "People want things to make sense," she assures Becca. The climax of the play is Becca's confrontation with Jason (Jeris Schaefer), the boy whose car killed Danny. He is looking for redemption. He has written a science-fiction story that seems to hold the possibility of a parallel universe with a happy Becca, a looking-glass version of the rabbit hole of grief. In a scene devoid of any fantasy or hope of solace, Becca puts aside her ongoing bickering with the coarse Nat to ask, "Does it ever go away?" "What?" Nat says. "This feeling. Does it ever go away?" Maaske turns from Becca, her eyes brimming with tears she does not shed. "No," she says. "It never does." Becca may glimpse the fact that although her grief is specific and personal, others have their grief. It's not much, but it's a step toward living in a world that no longer makes sense. "Rabbit Hole" has both the virtues and shortcomings of its genre. We feel we know these people. I mean it as a compliment to say there is no TV-style denouement, but it also leaves Becca with a tough lot, a provisional ending at best. The writing is so clear the play could be a model in playwrighting classes, the direction taut and the acting first-rate. But "Rabbit Hole" is not particularly theatrical, and it won't change the way you look at life, or theater. Yet it shines light into dark places in the heart. It's probably appropriate for real people who are grieving. I would rather visit the absurdist worlds of the quirky Lindsay-Abaire, where surprising discoveries may lurk, but that's simply a preference. "Rabbit Hole" continues through June 22. Reach reporter Bill Varble at 776-4478 or e-mail [email protected] . Would you like to respond to this story? If so Click Here to visit our forums. Advertisement Copyright © 1997-2007 Mail Tribune, Inc. All rights reserved. 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