Oakland’s ‘Rabbit Hole’ is brilliant

By Milan Paurich

YOUNGSTOWN — The production of David Lindsay-Abaire’s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama “Rabbit Hole” that opened to a gratifyingly large and enthusiastic audience at the Oakland Center for the Arts on Friday night makes great community theater seem deceptively easy.

Consider:

Pick a contemporary drama (or comedy) that hasn’t been staged locally before, judiciously sprinkle it with the very best available talent and voil °! To his credit, director Christopher Fidram never lets us see the heavy-lifting required in the mounting of a play — let alone a Pulitzer winner — and his seemingly casual approach pays huge dividends.

Fidram’s direction is effortlessly elegant and beautifully understated, and Jim Lybarger’s attractive set design is as naturalistic and unfussy as the performances. It isn’t until leaving the theater that you realize how extraordinary, and extraordinarily moving, the experience was.

For a play dealing with the aftermath of a child’s death, it’s remarkable how truly life-affirming “Rabbit Hole” feels. Becca and Howie Corbett (Sara Klimenko and Joel Stigliano) are still reeling from the accidental death of their 4-year-old son, Danny, eight months earlier when Izzy (Candace DiLullo), Becca’s impetuous younger sister, drops the bombshell that she’s pregnant. Nat (LJ “Tess” Tessier), Becca and Izzy’s mom, seems to be taking the news better than expected, but the tension in the air at Izzy’s birthday party is thick enough that you can cut it with a butter knife. (Becca’s controversial choice of birthday gift — a bathroom set instead of baby accessories — speaks volumes.)

Adding another layer of existential malaise to a family already fraught with issues is Jason Willette (Cheney Morgan), the teenage boy responsible for Danny’s death (it was Jason’s car that killed Danny when he ran onto the street chasing his dog). Jason has contacted Becca in the hopes of arranging a meeting. Whether it’s to clear his conscience — it was an accident, after all — or agenda-driven, nobody really knows — not even Jason who seems as genuinely confused and helpless as everyone else in the Corbett domicile.

When you consider the myriad ways that “Rabbit Hole” could have gone (disastrously) wrong with such a loaded, “Lifetime Movie” premise, it’s a miracle the play is as lucid, intelligent and unapologetically grown-up as it is.

Lindsay-Abaire never goes for the obvious plucking of the heartstrings the material suggests. His dispassionate approach to melodrama — and flair for writing barbed, witty dialogue — guarantees that “Hole” never descends into maudlin bathos or, even worse, Hallmark porn (“Let’s all feel good about feeling bad!”)

Because the slightest tonal miscue could sink the entire enterprise, Fidram wisely steers clear of any audience pandering or button-pushing. You may laugh and cry — sometimes simultaneously — but Fidram is confident enough in his abilities that you never once feel manipulated. He’s also to be congratulated for eliciting a quintet of beautifully nuanced performances of uncommon delicacy and restraint.

DiLullo brilliantly nails the play’s choicest comic bits, and makes Izzie’s transformation from black-sheep screw-up to sentient adult exquisitely affecting. Tessier is so convincing as Mother Hen Nat that you’d swear she wasn’t acting at all (yes, that’s a supreme compliment for any performer). There isn’t a false note in Youngstown State University student Morgan’s sterling performance. In fact, watching Jason literally choke on inchoate emotions (being a kid, he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to be feeling, or even how to express his grief) may be the most poignant element of the entire show.

Both Stigliano and Klimenko are beyond reproach. If you didn’t know better, you’d swear they were actually married. The unforced intimacy of their conjugal bond feels stunningly apt and shockingly visceral.

The Oakland has had a terrific run lately (“Reefer Madness,” “Driving Miss Daisy,” et al), and “Rabbit Hole” concludes its 2008-09 season on a suitably triumphant note. Here’s one for the time capsule, folks.

X“Rabbit Hole” runs through June 20 at the Oakland Center for the Arts in downtown Youngstown. For tickets and show times, call (330) 746-0404.