Rabbit Hole, or: How I learned to stop worrying and revel in the Multiverse

At the risk of sounding like an Americanphile, Broadway is where Theatre is at.

I'm sorry but regardless of how much effort Cate Blanchett and Andrew Upton of the Sydney Theatre Company and Neil Armfield and Ralph Myers of Belvoir St. Theatre inject in their attempts to create a niche, progressive and specialist theatre milieu for Sydney (which, they are doing quite a superb job, given the limited resources), it is just unable to rival that of Broadway, or Off-Broadway for that matter. The sad and ironic thing is that I reside in Sydney and not in New York City. I have to make-do with Sydney's theatre scene, which I would argue, due to it not being so established and wrought by investors, is much more experimental and aspirational. It's a theatre that tries harder to attract crowds, as it doesn't inherently possess the spectacle of Broadway lights and other niceties.

This is why I was so excited to have been access to a video recording of Daniel Sullivan's 2006 Manhattan Theatre Club's original Broadway production of David Lindsay-Abaire's play Rabbit Hole. And despite the bootleg's jarring cinematography, I was happily mesmerised.

I had been dreaming the impossible dream of witnessing Cynthia Nixon's Tony Award winning performance as Becca, the still-grieving mother of Rabbit Hole. Since, Sex and the City, I always had faith in Nixon as a formidable and provocative actress, and though Sex and the City was no dud, it surely was no Eugene O'Neill either. To see Nixon in a role that was worth her weight, was more than worth my wait. Soon, we'll also come to see Nicole Kidman's rendition of Becca, and it'll be interesting to compare the two.

Director Daniel Sullivan unceremoniously opens the play in midair. Becca, folding what we soon come to discover are the clothes of Danny, her four-year-old deceased son, casually banters with her sister Izzy (Mary Catherine Garrison) about Izzy's recent, seemingly random bar-fight with a romantic rival. Izzy is, most indeed, a kook, and Becca is surrounded by more than a few of them in the play. You'd think, Becca, a woman on the verge, would suffer no fools but rather it is these kooks, more than her seemingly rational and sensible husband Howie (John Slattery), that give both her and her grief sporadic release.

Nixon delivers a naturalistic performance, one that is inherently wry and standoffish, as she works her familiar gestural toolkit to great effect. I find Nixon to often express very sharp and incisive facial gestures, a characteristic, which if belonging to another (lesser) actress, I would strangely think her as limited. With Nixon, however, her toolkit of incisive gestures comes to be part of her appeal and the means by which she has continued to be able to play these aloof, self-contained women. Nixon stoically charts Becca's subtle emotional and rational disintegration in the face of her son's aging eight-month old wake.

The supporting cast adds enough variation and lightness to the play's intrinsically mournful undertone. The standout player is Nat (Tyne Daly), Becca's mother, who too has suffered the same fate as her daughter, albeit in less innocuous circumstances. And just as we have written her off as a needy, neurotic but well-meaning and funny fuss-pot, she offers a pot of gold of advice to both Becca and the audience.

Trauma, loss, grief and sadness open one's mind-eyes and often transfigures the view of the world. Rabbit Hole illuminates this concept and, in doing so, further opens the audience's mind-eyes. The play poetically and poignantly offers the audience with two lessons, or rather, two possibilities. The first is from Nat, as she explains to Becca the way that a mother's grief can change; transmogrify from something that smothers to something that comforts:

"At some point it becomes bearable ... and you forget it every once in awhile, and then you reach in for what ever reason, and there it is ... sometimes it's kind of - not that you like it, exactly, but it's what you have instead of your son, so you don't want to let go of it either. So you carry it around and it doesn't go away - which is / fine, actually."

The second belongs to Jason (John Gallagher Jr.), the teenage driver of the car that killed Danny. In the short story that he writes and dedicates in memory to Danny, Becca unravels the scientific hypothesis of the Multiverse; a theory of rabbit holes and many-world parallel universes. Jason nonchalantly explains that if one accepts the most basic laws of science, - here referring namely to Einstein's theory of relativity and quantum physics - the Multiverse is not only plausible but probable, and with an infinite version of Beccas, Johns, Howies, Nats, Izzys, mes and yous. And somewhere out there one of those Beccas is "having a good time." This, certainty, is a nice thought!

These two ideas, along with the film's subtle reference to the Butterfly Effect/Chaos Theory (wherein it's revealed that each member of the family is to be blamed for the death; each is as guilty as a butterfly is in the creation of a tsunami), graciously transpire this tragicomedic kitchen-sink drama into a play about esoteric ideas. These never come across as didactic, but rather as insights that both Becca and the audience painstakingly crave, as a way to make meaning of Danny's death. Yes this is so, even in light of Becca's plea, earlier in the play, to stop people (such as her mother) counselling her with the 'God-talk'.

I did not have an authentic live 'theatre' experience of the play, but the fact that it still affected me deeply is a testament to the power of David Lindsay-Abaire's words, Sullivan's direction and the ensemble cast's acting.

The 2010 film adaptation of the play will be out soon, and it'll be interesting to compare the two productions. From the trailer, it seems that director John Cameron Mitchell has decided to leave the comedic aspects behind and, instead, mine the emotional intensity to its paroxysmal end.

I couldn't find any YouTube clips of the 2006 Broadway production, but found a video of Cynthia Nixon talking about theatre and briefly mentioning her role in Rabbit Hole. Here are a few teasers from the upcoming film version, starring two-time Academy Award winner Dianne Wiest.