As a student playwright, David Lindsay-Abaire was once tasked with writing a script about the thing that scared him most. He never found a suitable subject until years later when he became a dad.
The result was “Rabbit Hole,” his Pulitzer Prize-winning 2007 play about a couple struggling to cope and move on after the death of their 4-year-old son. Although it’s a sad play filled with tears and angry confrontations, it also has moments of humor, healing and hope.
A new production of “Rabbit Hole” is now playing at Trinity Theatre Company at the Mission Valley mall. Directed by Eddy Lukovic with an evocative scenic design by Dennis Floyd, the staging delivers the raw authenticity the play demands, as well as some much-needed levity.
They play takes place at the Westchester County home of Howie and Becca, where the 40something couple is barely getting by eight months after their son Danny ran into the street after the family dog and was hit by a car. As a reflection of the couple’s grief, the interior of their home has been stylistically drained of color with virtually everything from the funiture to the plateware and food a drab mix of grays and black. The only color left in their home is in their son’s untouched bedroom, filled with abandoned toys and books and a large multicolor vortex painted on the wall.
A scene from Trinity Theatre Company’s “Rabbit Hole,” starring Jordyn Case, rear left, and Paul Bonner. (Megan Goyette)
Howie is beginning to heal and is comforted by photos and home movies of Danny. He wants the intimacy back in his troubled marriage and floats the idea of another baby. But Becca is adrift in her grief, unable to comprehend how fate could take away her child when she’d been the perfect mom. She can’t stand seeing Danny’s photos, she has banished their dog, rejects her family’s efforts to comfort her, and resents her party-loving unwed younger sister who’s about to have a baby of her own.
But when Jason, the 17-year-old teenage driver who accidentally struck Danny, reaches out seeking forgiveness, a door — or in this case, a rabbit hole — opens to a potentially happier future for Becca and Howie.
Jordyn Case gives a razor-edged and icy-cold performance as the shattered Becca, which Michael DiRoma beautifully balances with warmth, gentleness and patience as Howie. Kimberly Weinberg gives an exuberant and funny performance as Becca’s saucy sister Izzy. Vicky Dawson is loopy and judgmental as Becca’s wine-swilling mom Nat. And Paul Bonner is boyishly awkward as Jason, a sci-fi story writer who believes in parallel universes.
Nashun Ticker designed the plays lighting, Brenna Maeinschein designed costumes and Natalia Demko designed sound.
Although “Rabbit Hole” is a story about death, it’s also about the beauty of life, family, forgiveness, hope and happiness for the future, which director Lukovic cleverly forecasts in the play’s final moments.
‘Rabbit Hole’
When: 2 p.m. today, Feb. 15; 7 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Feb. 20-21; 2 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 22
Where: Trinity Theatre Company, Mission Valley mall, 1640 Camino Del Rio North, Suite 129, San Diego
Tickets: $30
Online: trinityttc.org