Death is not the end

Life is full of grief and loss. A bad breakup, a best friend moving away, even graduating and leaving college often brings a sense of loss. The greatest loss of all, perhaps, is death. The grief of having someone close to us die can be overwhelming and even paralyzing.

Artists Repertory Theater’s newest production, last year’s Pulitzer Prize winning Rabbit Hole, deals with perhaps the greatest loss of all–the death of a child.

In the play, it has been months since Becca and Howie lost their four-year-old son in a tragic accident. She tries to rid the house of any trace of the child’s existence, and he sits up at night watching videotapes from when their son was alive. Neither one of them is “over it,” even though they both feel the social pressure that they should be. Their grief, and the expectation that it should be over, takes a great toll on their relationship.

As this play shows, every person deals with grief differently. Becca quickly stops attending the “grieving parents” support group, while Howie soldiers on. Both of them has to struggle with friends who no longer know how to relate to them, the uncomfortable looks of others and their own sadness. Any sight or talk of children can bring the simmering anguish back to the surface.

Rabbit Hole feels more like a movie than a play. The acting is subtler than one usually sees on stage, which suits the material well. The characters are realistically imperfect, yet loveable. The grief is broken up by moments of humor and true to the theme in movies this year, there’s even an unexpected pregnancy that is allowed to go to term.

All the cast handle their roles well. Susannah Mars plays the modern housewife, Becca. She does an excellent job with a character who at first seems not to be dealing with her grief at all, but we later see has her own way of facing it. Duffy Epstein ably handles the frustrated, yet ultimately loyal husband. Adreinne Flag brings welcome comic relief, as well as some tense moments, as Becca’s slacker sister.

Vana O’Brien, a founding member of Artists Rep who joined the cast only two weeks before the performance, completely owns the role of the tough-yet-loving mother. Alex Sorenson makes his Artists Rep debut as Jason, the high school science fiction nerd who accidentally killed the child with his car. With the fewest scenes of any character, he steals every scene he is in.

All the performances show the different ways people deal with grief. Some people act irresponsibly, some withdraw from others, some go to groups, some drink and some write short stories. Just like everything else, each person has their own way of dealing with loss and often struggles to accept the ways that others handle it.

Loss can drive people apart initially, like the characters in this play that react to pain by instinctively pushing others away. With time, however, they come to see that their grief is the very thing that they have most in common.

Rabbit Hole Playing through March 23 Tues. to Sat. at 7:30 p.m.Sunday at 2 p.m.$20 for students1516 SW Alder St.