Rabbit Hole
Good Theater Company
Through Sun., May 4

"People want things to make sense," observes Becca's mother, but Becca knows that things do not. When Becca's four-year-old son followed the family dog into the street and was killed by a car, where was the sense in that?

Rabbit Hole is a play about grief – the pain that causes it, and the pain it causes. Good Theater Company has chosen to end its current season at the St. Lawrence with this recent Pulitzer winner by David Lindsay-Abaire. They've gone out on a high note.

The excellent set by Craig Robinson features a suburban home so tidy and handsome that one might not at first notice the (literal) cracks in the facade. The family in the house is just as damaged. Becca (Denise Poirier) goes about her domestic tasks with precise, edgy care; she's as proper and brittle as fine china. Becca is so numb and isolated with grief that when her husband wants to kiss her, she ask, "Why?"

Husband Howie (Mark Rubin) thinks Becca should join him in a support group. Sister Izzy (Kathleen Kimball), a habitual screw-up, wounds Becca by accidentally getting pregnant and saying things like, "It's just the sort of thing to give a person clarity." And when their mother, Nan (Tootie Van Reenen), counsels Becca not to let sadness take over her life, Becca only finds it infuriating. No one can possibly understand how she feels – why does everyone want her to apologize for it?

The play doesn't mince words: Becca is going through hell, and it makes her hell to live with. Poirier does not go out of her way to soften Becca's harshness, does not play for easy sympathy, and is not afraid to be unlikable. Her ramrod posture and precise speech convey Becca's strength, while the flashes of pain in her eyes reveal how much of that strength she's using just to get by from day to day. It's a brave performance in a role that deserves one.

Sisters act: Kimball and Poirier as Izzy and Becca.

The rest of the cast is equally excellent. Kimball gets a lot of the funny lines – on the verge of motherhood, she asks, "If my mother could do it, how hard could it be?" – but she doesn't allow Izzy to become a cartoon. As Howie, Rubin gets across how difficult it has become to live as Becca's husband, but one never doubts that he still loves her. Van Reenen plays Nan as a mother who won't stop trying to help her daughter, even if her daughter just finds her efforts annoying. She also gets off a bunch of good lines, like when she describes the tragedy-prone Kennedys as "all those good-looking people falling out of the sky like that."

There aren't any real jokes in Rabbit Hole, only humor that arises from character, between the lines. Director (and Good Theater head honcho) Brian P. Allen really has a handle on the subtext in this show. Take the scene in which Becca meets Jason (Jesse Leighton), the teenager who drove the fatal car. Like Becca, Jason is tormented by the accident, haunted by the idea that he could have prevented it. Their chat is polite and bland. All the important sentiments are unsaid. Allen and his cast know restraint is usually more powerful than bombast.

Not much happens in Rabbit Hole; no one is magically made whole by the time the curtain falls. The play is too honest for that. Grief, as Nan says, never goes away, but becomes like "a brick in your pocket." You get used to it, grow strong enough to carry it. That's the only choice that makes sense.

– Jason Wilkins

Rabbit Hole continues at the St. Lawrence Arts & Community Center, 76 Congress St., Portland, through Sun., May 4. Performances are Thurs. at 7:30 p.m., Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. Tix: $17 (Thurs. night and Sat., May 3, 3 p.m. matinee performances), $22 ($19 students and seniors; all other performances). 885-5883. stlawrencearts.org, goodtheater.com.