OnStage: Leap of faith

Lee Mark Nelson and Amy McDonald had quite different reactions the first time they read the script of "Rabbit Hole," which opens tonight at the Jungle Theater in Minneapolis.

"I thought it was awful," Nelson said, setting aside diplomacy for a moment. "To me, on the page, it was a bad 'Lifetime Movie of the Week.' "

McDonald came to David Lindsay-Abaire's story from a different perspective. The play deals with a sudden and traumatic loss within a family, and McDonald has been there.

"Morbidly, I was attracted to it," she said of the script. "I do know the agony of acute, unexpected loss."

Lindsay-Abaire's play deals with a prosperous couple whose 4-year-old son is killed when he runs into the street and is struck by a car. Nelson and McDonald play the mother and father, who mask their grief with the humdrum of everyday life. There is a whiff of Pinter -- not so much in the language -- but in the implications behind and between the words.

"Exactly," said Jungle artistic director Bain Boehlke, who is staging this show. "It's in the silences that you hear what is so deeply felt but has no vocabulary.

"The culture has no practice in dealing with the death of a 4-year-old," he said. "We do with grandparents, or soldiers. We know how to respond and assist in the grief, but children are not meant to pass away before their parents."

"Rabbit Hole" won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for drama in a slight controversy. It was not among the three nominated plays, but when the Pulitzer board could not muster a majority for any of the finalists, "Rabbit Hole" was considered.

It marks a significant departure for Lindsay-Abaire. He's best known for letting scenarios spin out of control into quirky, dark comedies such as "Fuddy Meers," "Kimberly Akimbo" or "Wonder of the World." Here, he switches his gambit to naturalism.

"You know his mentor, Marsha Norman, suggested that he write about something that was his greatest fear, something that scared him," Boehlke said.

"I thought the play was a very well architected [sic] piece of theater about a subject matter that can often get sentimental. But he gets at the sorrow and despair without it becoming too bogged down and overly emotional."

Crib notes

In case directors and actors didn't pick up on that evenhanded sensibility, Lindsay-Abaire took it upon himself to include a note in the script that says in part:

"Please, no extra embracing, or holding of hands. ... There can and should be moments of hope and genuine connection between these characters, but I don't ever want a moment where the audience sighs and says, 'Oh good, they're gonna be okay now.'"

Nelson, who showed up for the first rehearsal still not sold on the play, said he rolled his eyes when he saw that note.

"When a playwright is telling me you have to act a certain way, I wonder, 'Maybe there's something wrong with your script,' " he said.

This story does have a happy ending. Nelson has warmed up to the play as he and McDonald put it through its paces in front of Boehlke.

"Bain repeats a line eight times in a row," Nelson said, "and each time you see more of what's happening in the line, or the subtleties of what's not being said."

Sense of loss lingers

McDonald didn't need an author's note or the director's suggestion to find the feelings of inchoate grief inside her. Her husband died unexpectedly 15 years ago. In an instant, she was alone with a 2-year-old son.

"I don't have to dredge up that emotion," she said. "It's still there."

McDonald learned firsthand what Boehlke mentioned about our culture lacking the right vocabulary to deal with loss.

"I went to an acting school with a good friend, and two months after the tragedy, the friend said, 'This is going to enrich your acting in so many ways,' " McDonald said. "I was so offended but 15 years later, she was right. People try to say what they think is best but they just flounder."

McDonald and Nelson -- veterans of the local scene -- have never appeared together. Coincidentally, McDonald played Sheila Wellstone to Chris Nelson's Paul Wellstone at the History Theatre two years ago. So she has now been married to both brothers onstage. When she was asked to compare the two, McDonald chose her words carefully.

"They are wonderfully different and wonderfully the same," she said.

Spoken with the careful wisdom of a politician.

Graydon Royce • 612-673-7299