Review: RABBIT HOLE, Union Theatre

Becca is grieving the loss of her son, Danny, killed by a car when chasing his dog out into the road - her life is stuck and so, in consequence, is her husband's, Howie. Her sister, Izzy, is pregnant - which doesn't help - and her mother, Nat, thinks it's time to 'move on' - which doesn't help either. And the car's driver, Jason, wants to meet to talk - which might help, but help who?

During the interval, I was wondering if David Lindsay-Abaire's play, a Pulitzer Prize winner in 2007, wasn't a re-imagining of Stephen King's novel, Pet Sematary, because there were a lot of those vibes in the air. But I had read the play's advertising leaflet and that included a (frankly disappointing) spoiler, so the tension, that barely rises above tepid due to the pedestrian script, was dissipated through that supplementary information.

This is a play in which everything is contained within the family unit, with the exception of the car's driver. Julia Papp's Becca goes through the emotions of grief, though not those overly familiar stages, as she is 'stuck', but we learn little of her life beyond her bereaved mother status. Kim Hardy gives us a Howie who wants his old life back, but, apart from the fact that he has a well played job, we learn little of his character either. It's never quite clear why Emma Vansittart's Nat and Ty Glaser's Izzy (Becca's mother and sister) are visiting so often, other than to facilitate exposition. Max Pemberton has an otherworldly presence as Jason, raising questions as to whether he is even present at all and not some inadequate coping mechanism conjured by Becca, but magical realism is not where the writer chooses to go.

Ethan Cheek's interesting all-grey, monochrome set, mirrors the colour drained from the couple's lives when Danny died and director, Lawrence Carmichael, has the cast eat and drink plenty over the two hours plus running time, emphasising the domesticity that has been shattered and is not coming together again any time soon.

The pay-off promised in the leaflet doesn't really land (not to the extent it does in Werner Herzog's emotionally draining short film, From One Second To The Next for example) and one is left feeling a little cheated by the low key denouement. That said, it's a relief not to have to keep translating back from American English into English English, probably an insurmountable problem as the text is embedded in US suburbia, but wearing all the same.

There's always an audience for watching others' miseries and conflicts (there's a few shouty, soapy showdowns) and this play will find it, as it has when revived in the past. But its insularity proved too strong for me to break down and, for all the commitment of the performances, I was left disengaged from stuff that wasn't any of my business and that stayed that way to the end.

Rabbit Hole is at the Union Theatre until 1 May

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