SLAC's 'Rabbit Hole' is compelling

RABBIT HOLE, Salt Lake Acting Company, through Oct. 8 (363-7522 or 355-2787). Running time: 110 minutes (one intermission).

"Rabbit Hole" is one of the most compelling plays to come to Utah in a long time.

If you see the production of David Lindsay-Abaire's work at the Salt Lake Acting Company, you will feel as if you are sitting in the living room of Becca and Howie's home, eavesdropping on them as they grieve over the loss of their son.

It is an anguishing story: A dead 4-year-old. His heartbroken parents.

Humor comes to the plot in the form of a tactless mother, played by Anne Cullimore Decker, and an accidentally pregnant sister, played by Colleen Baum. A grieving couple could not possibly do worse than to be related to these two. Still, the audience is grateful for them. They make us laugh out loud.

Michelle Peterson plays Becca and Eric Robertson is Howie. Both project stoniness beautifully. Jason, the teenager who ran over the child, is played by Andy Rindlisbach.

The acting is excellent.

Keven Myhre directs and also did the set design. It is a nice set, to be sure — with the child's empty bedroom hovering above the living room, always in view. It's a nice set, but really, you don't think about it much. You have all you can do to absorb the dialogue.

In the first act, Becca is so angry and brittle that you are sure you are going to see the marriage disintegrate by the end of the play. You think probably her mother and sister aren't going to put up with her much longer either.

But then, at some point, when she and Howie are screaming at each other, she says, "It sucks that we can't be there for each other."

Then you start to have a tiny jot of hope. Maybe they loved each other a lot, at some earlier time, in a different world.

Of course, in the second act, it seems Howie will be the one whose grief will end the marriage. But still, there is that little bit of hope. Howie and Becca both wish they could comfort each other, even if they can't.

At some point, maybe after you leave the theater, you realize how nicely the play is constructed. You see that Becca is as capable of protecting Howie as he is of protecting her.

You see that the death of a child may put you in another universe and that you may never fully inhabit the world you used to live in.

But it seems as though there is life in that other world, as well.

Lindsay-Abaire makes you face your deepest fear.

Sensitivity rating: R-rated language.

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