Rabbit Hole

Saw NIDA’s graduate production “Rabbit Hole” twice already. When you feel you enjoyed something second time round even more than the first, you know you are in for something really special. That’s exactly what this production of “Rabbit Hole” was to me.

The cast is an unknown cast to the outside world but they displayed one of the best ensemble casts I had seen recently. Most of the cast members have to act beyond their age. One of them even put on pads to achieve so. However, what made it special was the precise performance delivered by these soon to be graduates.

The premise of the play was about grief – five characters five different ways of dealing with the same grief. It is a case of helping each other while drowning themselves from time to time. Becca played by Jacinta Acevski was a woman who left her successful job to become a full time mum but things didn’t really go the way she wanted. She’s still controlling, judgmental and at times cynical. Her husband Howie, played by Rick Donald, was broker who sought external help while grieving privately. To ensure that he could “help” his wife, he put on a strong face. Then came along Izzy, played by Gabrielle Scawthorn, the slightly eccentric party girl sister who found out she was pregnant. She was also a girl who wanted to be the centre of attention while tiptoeing around everybody’s grief. Becca and Izzy’s mother Nat, played by Shari Sebbens, was trying to scull through her own experience to help her daughter, only to find out that it complicated things instead. Lastly we have, Jason, played by Hugo Johnstone-Burt, who was seeking closure for the pain he caused.

What’s good about this cast is that they didn’t try hard to make believe. I mean of course it will be hard to compare them with Cynthia Nixon or John Slattery, but they delivered a performance that in my opinion went way beyond some of the professional productions I saw in 2009. The play emphasized on grief, but it did not exaggerate it. So crying was not an essential element for the characters for most of the part and it was exactly because of this that when any of the characters eventually broke down, the impact was much greater – and these actors dealt with those important turning points with perfection. Howie’s outburst as compared to his usual composure completely exposed the pain and brokenness inside him and how he failed to deal with it no matter how hard he tried. Izzy to a lot of people was a comic relief (and that’s probably why in the Ensemble production they had a comedienne to play her, which I thought was wrong) but she is more than that. She was in fact quite a binding factor in the family as a lot of events revolved around her without she actually acknowledging the attention she got at times. Gabrielle’s interpretation of the “shrug” in the original script was one of my favorite moments in the play.

The set of the play was beautifully done and reflects the social status of Becca and Howie. Also there was sufficient space to play out all the actions written in the script. However, the stairs to upstairs did look flimsy from time to time, and it does look dangerous when characters ran up and down it. The play also had a nice and suitable soundtrack and I liked the fact they had actual video footage on the TV screen instead of just putting out a soundtrack. Kudos to them for that. J

“Rabbit Hole” runs till 17 October 2009 at the Parade Studio at NIDA.