Today I have an audition for the play Rabbit Hole by David Lindsay-Abaire. It's being done at Florida Studio Theatre and I'm going in for the role of Howie, the husband. This play, which won the Pulitzer Prize this year, was originally produced by Manhattan Theatre Club and starred Cynthia Nixon (of Sex and the City fame).
I did not see the original production, but I've auditioned for this role before, so this is my third or fourth time reading the play and working on it. It's an astonishing play. Hauntingly beautiful. A painful journey into the lives of one family as they struggle to deal with the loss of their three year old child. The play doesn't offer any pat answers, and each of the characters process loss in their own way. Becca (the Cynthia Nixon role) has a particularly difficult time living with the memories of her son - the clothes, the toys, the photos. Even the house has become a shrine to his death and she feels increasingly more trapped and unable to move beyond anything other than constant guilt and sorrow.
To make things even worse, Becca's younger sisiter, Lizzy, has become pregnant. Never was there a more ill-suited candidate for parenthood than Lizzy. She drinks, parties, swears like a trucker, gets into bar fights, sleeps around, and is perpetually underemployed. But becoming a mother may be Lizzy's salvation. There is a particularly moving scene where Becca attempts to give LIzzy some of her dead sons clothes. It is a well-meaning gesture, but clearly Becca can't see past her own grief to how her actions impact on other people.
In the scene I've been given for the audition, Howie is alone with Lizzy and she confronts him about having an affair. It's unclear whether Howie actually has gone through with it, but the fact that he's been spotted in public with another woman is signal enough that his marriage with Becca is sinking. There is shame, guilt, denial, anger, frustration, rage, and a mounting sense of doom all in the span of a few pages. What a great task as an actor!
David Lindsay-Abaire may be one of the greatest living playwrights today. A great testament to the healing power of shared grief, Rabbit Hole is, in my opinion, the most important, and most perfect play for all of us living in a post-911 world. This is artistry at its finest.
