Thummer Thtock

Rabbit Hole by David Lindsay Abaire. New Century Theatre, Northampton, MA.

First time I’ve seen this piece. First time I’ve had the opportunity to see anything by this celebrated writer. I’m always curious to see what is bringing critical and commercial success to my colleagues. Accent on the commercial. What is it that producers are buying? What are subscription audiences being programmed to adore?

Of course I’d heard brilliant things about DLA and this play, and I was expecting to be dazzled. I wasn’t—although the production here is solid in most every way. I just kept waiting for the play to arrest me somehow, show me something new or startling, lead me somewhere I haven’t been before. I waited in vain.

 

It’s a simple utterly naturalistic story, not a lot of plot. Character-driven action. I admire that for sure. Aspire to it. My own plays lately tend to be teetering towers of plot. Rabbit is full of plain truth and pain and heart. There are moments of exquisite subtlety and fragility here. I applaud the writer’s masterly use of indirection.

It’s an inherently sentimental situation: The death of a small child. The play, according to its rep, steers way clear of treating the situation sentimentally. I suppose it succeeds in this regard. It’s moving rather than sentimental. The audience all around me (including my companion) picked up its cues and snuffled away for most of the evening. But not hard-boiled me.

I kept asking myself: why tell this story? It’s terribly familiar. Delicately handled, yes. Rigorously honest, yes. Head and shoulders above the various Lifetime TV tellings of it. But fresh? Transformational? Not for me.

My companion (someone who incidentally has rather more experience in his life of moving through profound loss and grieving than I do in mine) was completely captivated by the play. He, who virtually always falls asleep in middle of the second act of just about anything, was riveted. Afterwards, as we drove back home up the mountain in the dark, he listened patiently to my responses to it, then shared his own: In his aesthetic, the theatre doesn’t only exist to startle us every time with brand new perspectives on human experience. He says there’s also a way that it operates as ritual, drawing us deep into simple, old, elemental stories, facilitating group catharsis. The whole Greek thing, I guess. And being a properly educated, right-thinking Western playwright, I’m compelled to respect that. But for me, David Lindsay Abaire ain’t no Euripides. I look forward to seeing some of his other work and perhaps changing my mind.

Three Sisters by Chekhov. Williamstown Theatre Festival.
Bang-up production of this unarguably brilliant play. Kudos first of all to the dramaturg, who does not smugly remind us in the program notes how Chekhov’s plays are all considered madcap comedies in Russia and how the present production by God is going be hilariously, properly Russian, just as Anton would have wanted it. (I confess I may be a little bitter here, having sat through numerous such profoundly un-funny productions directed by Eastern European auteurs du jour at the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge)

The Williamstown crew are playing it straight, and yet with a light-ish contemporary touch. Michael Greif directs.

Of course the production is over the top tech-wise, this being Williamstown. Like bringing the entire apprentice company of 50 onstage in period costume for an extraneous and pointless 30-second prologue. I could probably self-produce an entire black-box workshop production of my new full-length with what they overspent on this prologue alone.

Acting’s top notch across the board. Standouts are Jessica Hecht as Olga, Jonathan Fried as Kulygin, and the venerable Roberta Maxwell as the nurse. The cast also includes our playwright colleague Michael Cristopher as Chebutykin.

I’ve always thought that the crazy thing about Chekhov's great plays is all these characters wringing their hands for four substantial acts and moaning about how deeply they’re suffering. What’ve they got to suffer about? They live in these nice big houses, they’ve got armies of servants and plenty to eat, vodka flows like water, they’re in exuberant good health, they’re unencumbered by religion and quite comfy about conducting these raffish extra-marital affairs when their own marriages get a little dull. Now, if one of them were queer, that would be something to suffer about. My hunch is Chekhov is gently sending up these people. (Eastern European auteurs du jour take note.)

On to Moscow!