Bruce the Blog

Publisher Bruce Apar with actress Frances Sternhagen, mother of “Rabbit Hole” star Tony Carlin.

[Editor’s Note: The following is an extended version of Bruce Apar’s Talking Points column that appears in the Nov. 18, 2009 print edition of North County News on page 8 and on NCNLocal.com.]

The Pulitzer-winning stage drama “Rabbit Hole” is a commercially astute and accomplished blend of craft, research and a topic most people are unfamiliar with, thankfully. There are two distinct audiences affected in profoundly different ways by this show: People who have not lost children, and people who have.
 
Since our family falls into the latter audience, that’s the undetached magnfying glass through which my wife Elyse and I watched the performance last Saturday (Nov. 14) at Hudson Stage in Woodward Hall Theater on the Briarcliff Manor campus of Pace University.  

Sitting alongside us was Kate, a fellow member of the bereavement group Elyse attends bimonthly at Yorktown’s Presbyterian Church: The Caring Circle.
 
I had never seen a Hudson Stage production, and suffice to say we will be back. The first-class team at work is led by producers Denise Bessette, Dan Foster (who also directed this production) and Olivia Sklar.
 
From their impeccable casting to the compact yet entirely serviceable set, these folks know how to mount an entertainment that gives little away to The Great White Way.
 
Becca and Howie are a youthful couple who lost their only child eight months earlier when four-year-old Danny chased his dog Taz into the street, only to be fatally struck by a car.
 
Playwright David Lindsay-Abaire sensitively and adroitly captures and conveys the essence of life after child loss.
 
His copious research is evident in the myriad emotional and situational touchstones we three can testify to: those friends and relatives who don’t know how to express condolences and so avoid the topic altogether; formulating responses to “Do you have children?”; wondering when, or if, the searing pain will subside; seeing the child in objects around the house and even when food shopping; indignation when others compare losing a child to losing a parent; sharing your grief with others in a bereavement group; the effect of loss on your faith; dreading the child’s birthday; and more. 

[Following this review further down the page are personal annotations on “Rabbit Hole.”]

What stands out most about this production is the acting, uniformly impressive, but not because it tries to be. That’s a mean feat in itself. The lead characters, in the persons of Susannah Schulman and Tony Carlin, are limned with the most naturalistic, minimalist and affecting acting you’ll see anywhere. Their interpretations are pitch perfect. (Carlin is the son of noted stage and screen actress Frances Sternhagen, who attended the same performance.)
 
Becca’s mother Nat and sister Izzy, portrayed by Lucy Martin and Theo Allyn, respectively, are there not only for much-needed comic relief but also as the consciences of Becca and Howie. They too are superlative. 
  Theo Allyn, bounding about the stage like a mischevious elf, reminded me of the character Anybody’s in West Side Story, a megawatt bundle of energy and attitude. Lucy Martin’s charming world-weariness is salted with a disarming approach to crazy-like-a-fox conversations that seem to go nowhere but arrive at their destination with all the subtlety of a brass band. Then there’s Brandon Gill as semi-mysterious stranger Jason Willett, the high school senior whose car caused Danny’s demise. There’s no denying the gifted Gill, a product of Juilliard, is mesmerizing. He is the proverbial discovery of whom it can be said in this performance, “You can’t take your eyes off him.”
 
His quietly intense Jason is gentle and vulnerable and sympathetic without being wimpy or shallow.  

His “secret” is the same as all the other piercing performances before us: it’s said writing is rewriting, and this is like a master class in the principle of acting as reacting.
 
I got as much out of watching these actors when they weren’t speaking as when they were. That’s something you don’t see often enough either on stage or on screen. That’s what authentic acting is all about. They all are fully in the moment every moment on stage.

I could cavil about the showiness of a couple of his set pieces, such as the slightly overwritten speech Becca’s mom delivers late in the show, sharing her hard-earned wisdom about losing her adult son, Becca’s brother Arthur.  
 
But even Arthur Miller and Eugene O’Neill, those high priests of fictional families frayed beyond the fringe, were showy with their memorable verbal glissandos. That’s what stagecraft is all about: compressing emotions and life experiences into a two-hour crucible of thought-provoking, eloquent diversion. Besides which, audiences want to be enriched and enlightened, not tortured by emotions too raw to encounter even with a fourth wall to cushion the blows.

Between the Pulitzer-awarded writing, the wonderful acting, and the smart direction, there’s little not to like going down this “Rabbit Hole.”  Remaining performances are Friday, Nov. 20 and Saturday , Nov. 21 at 8:00 p.m. and Sunday, Nov. 22 at 3:00 p.m., followed by a discussion. Tickets are $30, $25 for seniros and students, $20 for Pace staff and students. Call 914-271-2811 or www.hudsonstage.com.  [PERSONAL ANNOTATIONS ON ‘RABBIT HOLE’]

[Izzy telling Becca about punching woman in bar, saying, “I hurt too.”) Becca: “Don’t use him as an excuse to justify your behavior.”
 
[How relatives and friends deal with death]
Becca’s friend Debbie hasn’t called her in 8 mos since Danny’s death.

Becca’s husband Howie says because Debbie doesn’t know what to say, and Becca should call her. As example of how even those close have difficulty dealing with death, especially sudden death of a child, Howie reminds Beccas his brother talked only about the Mets at Danny’s funeral. Becca replies: “Your brother’s an asshole.”
 
When Becca utters phrase early in play, “When Danny died …,” I was holding Elyse’s arm and her arm twitched noticeably.
 
Becca has copy of children’s book “Runaway Bunny,” noting, “I like seeing his fingerprints” on things he touched.
 
Nat’s son (Becca’s brother) Arthur died 11 years earlier. Her mother chronically reverts to talking about Arthur and her own experience losing a son, as a way to not-so-subtly guide, and hopefully influence, Becca in starting to let go and finding comfort somehow in what is both a horrific and immutable reality. Arthur was a heroin addict who committed suicide at age 31. Becca tells her mother, “I resent you lumping them [Martin and Danny] together.”
 
This is something child-losing people experience when people grope for something consoling to say – which is virtually impossible to accomplish in the death of a young child – and end up unwittingly — and unintentionally, we like to believe, end up equating the loss of a child with the loss of a parent, or even, in my own experience, the death of a pet. The total lack of similarity between losing a parent and a child should not have to be explained to anyone: We all expect to outlive our parents, so their demise in our lifetime is not only expected, but accepted as a fact of life for which adults are innately prepared. Even when children have terminal conditions, we are better prepared for the inevitable, but hardly any more accepting of it.
 
Sibling loss is another matter. They are blood too, but a child comes from within our body and our being. A sibling may or not be a mirror image. We don’t create our siblings, yet we produce children in our own image.  
 
Arthur’s situation is strikingly similar to my eldest brother Stephen, who also became addicted to heroin, and although his death was caused by crashing into a tree in the dead of night, my middle brother and our father always believed Stephen had just had enough of his sad life, which went downhill precipitously when our mother died suddenly of a brain anyeurysm when I was 9, Robert was 12 and Stephen was 18, a senior in high school.
 
Becca is tense and brittle. Her mother advises her to return to the bereavment group. Becca is wallowing in self-pity, which seems totally justified for someone whose 4-year-old son was killed after being hit by a car because he chased his dog into the street. It’s a freak accident that would devastate any parent.
 
Becca and Howie have not had sex in the eight months since he was killed or cleaned out Danny’s room in that time. She wants to sell the house because it reminds her too much of Danny and his absence. The one-set show economically incorporates a kitchen area on stage right (stage left to the audience), adjacent to a living room, behind which, on a platform, we see Danny’s room, sans any wall separating it from the living area.
 
When the mother tells Becca that she should go to the support group because “they understand,” Becca shoots back, “No, they don’t.” The observation is made that perhaps Becca is jealous of the comfort that others in her situation have found.
 
That speaks to the fact that though parents in group share losing a child, the respective circumstances that caused the child’s death can vary widely, and that creates distinctions in how people mourn and deal with loss, or don’t. Even kindred spirits of the most unthinkable kind can share emotions and antidotes only up to a point. Then it’s everyone for themselves.
 
Becca calls the members of the support group “God freaks” because that’s all they talk about as their way of rationalizing the loss. “My favorite,” she says facetiously, “is ‘God needed another angel.’”
 
Becca articulates how her faith not only has been shaken, but virtually extinguished, calling God “a sadistic p***k who says, ‘Worship me and I’ll treat you like s**t.” That mirrors – albeit to a more extreme degree – Elyse’s view of religion after we lost
Harrison. While
Harrison was in the ICU in what would prove to be his final hours, on life support, I was literally davening in the ICU lounge with a siddur and a yarmulke on my head. It was the only thing I could do at that point. I had done the same even before Harrison went to the hospital, while he was in his bedroom at night, coughing violently, which pained me deeply, and I was in the living room with a prayer book. He never knew what I was doing, of course; I didn’t want him to. After he passed, Elyse scoffed at what good my praying did.
 
Howie one night watches home movies of him and Danny. The next day, he returns to resume his viewing, only to find Becca accidentally has recorded over the tape, not realizing Howie had ejected the tape they use to record TV shows. Howie becomes enraged, launching a tirade against her attemps to “erase Danny” by removing his pictures from the wall. In fact, the play’s opening scene is Becca folding his clothes to either give them to her pregnant sister or donate them to Goodwill. “You’re trying to get rid of any evidence he was here,” alleges Howie, citing the clothes, his shoes, and Danny’s dog, Taz, which now resides with Becca’s mother Nat. The bitter icing on the cake is Becca’s wanting to move out of the house.
 
This recalled in my memory our leaving Harrison’s room intact for a while, eventually replacing his bed with a treadmill, and adding an elliptical machine to convert his bedroom into a vestpocket fitness area. Yet his dwarf-size desk and hutch remain, as do sundry posters on the wall and bric-a-brac such as little league trophies and puppets of Sesame Street’s Bert and Ernie, with which I put on impromptu comic interludes for him as a toddler when we lived on Long Island. He would laugh his little head off as Bert and Ernie cavorted with each other. I got as much enjoyment entertaining him as did he. (Bruce pausing here to sob.)
 
During this scene, the couple exchange momentary accusations about the indirect cause of Danny’s fatal accident. It’s the guilt trip, Becca saying that Howie left the gate unlatched for Danny to leave the yard. She then tells Howie he’s “not in a better place, but a different place” concerning coping with Danny’s death, adding, “It’s too bad we can’t be there for each other right now.”
 
Howie at another point tells Becca, “It’s too hard,” to deal with the situation.
 
When an open house is held to show to prospective home buyers, Izzy tells Howie it was stupid to leave Danny’s room intact because a couple of people asked about it. Izzy refers to it as bad “house karma” that drives away buyers.
 
The thorny aspect of how parents deal with conversations about kids is not plumbed deeply, but another aspect of child-loss that the playwright is careful to touch along the way. I’ve taken to saying of late with people who don’t know me, “I have a daughter who is a sophomore in college and we run a foundation in memory of our son.” That makes the explanation as positive and constructive – and as unawkward – as I know how.
 
Izzy tells Howie that his talking about Danny and how he died is “something you enjoy doing.” I can well relate to that because I never stop talking or writing about
Harrison, my attitude being why should I and make no apologies for it. We can’t talk to him, or touch him, or hold him. All we can do is talk and write about him.
 
Another grace note, as it were, that we all doubtless can relate to, is Becca saying when she went food shopping everything she saw reminded her of Danny: “He liked string cheese and Froot Loops.”
 
Becca confronted a mother in the supermarket who was at first resisting, then ignoring, her young child’s nagging to buy a fruit rollup. She thought to herself, “Don’t pretend he isn’t there,” the obvious subtext being, “You’re lucky he IS there. Don’t take it for granted.” She ends up smacking the woman, which is a theatrical flourish that harks back to the opening scene when Becca is aghast that her younger sister punched out another woman in a bar.
 
At another point, Becca talks about how much she enjoys attending an adult education course in another town because, “I don’t get ‘The Face’ there from people who don’t know me. “Hey, how you doing? You hang in there. These are people talking about books, they don’t want to talk about their family,” which is a relief to her of course.
 
Becca’s mom Nat tells her daughter about a woman who would come to comfort her when she lost her son Arthur. “Consoling me became her hobby,” says Nat. The woman, named Maureen, told Nat, “I want to share in your grief.” Maureen was the only one of Nat’s friends willing to talk about Arthur. However, Nat came to realize Maureen was doing it for herself, not Nat. Nat told her off, and never saw her again.
 
Nat delivers a set piece that passes on to her daughter her metaphorical description of how the emotional hell that attends losing a child changes over time. She alludes to it being “something you crawl out from under, and it becomes like a brick that you carry around in your pocket.”
 
When the young man whose car hit Danny visits with Becca – Howie has no interest in talking to him – he begins talking about how much fun he had on his prom night the prior Saturday. Becca is attentively and pleasantly listening, then abruptly bursts out in heaving sobs.
 
My inference was nothing more than the young man’s presence finally got to her. However, Elyse hit it on the head as we were leaving the theater when she said how much she related to that moment because it was about Becca thinking about all the milestones she won’t be able to enjoy with her son, like a prom. I told Elyse one area where we differ in mourning
Harrison’s absence is I dwell on what was and she dwells on what won’t be.
 
Howie and Becca remark about the onset of Danny’s birthday. “That’ll be hard,” he says. I thought about
Harrison’s birthday in two weeks from the performance we saw. It’s not as hard as it was in the first several years after he died, but, then again, it’s never easy either. It never will be.
 
The play’s end focuses on Becca getting back together with her friend Debbie, the mother of Danny’s friend Emily, as the couple talks about attending Emily’s birthday party.
 
“What are we going to do?” Becca asks Howie. The question clearly is meant to signal their predicament for the rest of their lives.
 
Those are the first words a broken Elyse said to me in the ICU after the surgeon told us
Harrison was gone. “What are we going to do?” she cried. A few hours prior, as I paced nervously just outside the ICU, there was an outbreak of activity, with a nurse shouting, “Get the defribillator!” There were several patients in the ward, but my gut — and my months of grim premonitions — told me right away it had to be Harrison. My fears escalated exponentially when the nurse’s next words were the cruelest any patient’s family could hear: “Get a social worker!” I took measured steps to Elyse, who was out of earshot, calmly gazed at her with crestfallen resignation, held her, and said, “Prepare yourself.”

She refused to believe my admonition. “No!” she anguished. She was right: nothing can prepare you.
 
“What are we going to do?” is the same question Becca asks Howie.

Howie answers it with a more immediate, specific plan: He tells Becca they’ll make their friends comfortable by first asking about their kids, and “pretend we’re really interested in that,” and then they’ll send the little ones inside and let their friends talk about Danny. It’s a purging process.
 
The play’s final lines are apropos and understated and naturally tentative:

Howie: “We’ll figure it out.”
Becca: “Will we?”
Howie: “I think we will.”