Why stage stars have been told: ‘Stop blubbing!’
AN AWARD-WINNING playwright has told actors that he doesn’t want his play about tragic family events turned into a full-blown tearjerker.
The drama — Rabbit Hole, by David Lindsay-Abaire — won the Pulitzer Prize when it ran on Broadway. It deals with how a daughter and her mother — each grieving from the death of a child — cope with the sorrow that isolates them.
On Broadway, where I saw Cynthia Nixon and Tyne Daly originate the main roles, the cast was brilliant and kept it straight. But some subsequent productions have annoyed Lindsay-Abaire, who complained his play had become too mawkish.
There will be none of that in London, when the play starts its run at the Hampstead Theatre on January 29, with Claire Skinner in the role of Becca, the daughter; and Alison Steadman playing Nat, her mother.
‘It’s got great heart but it’s not sentimental,’ Ms Steadman told me. ‘You see these two women both coping with grief and just not connecting, and at loggerheads.
‘The trauma that grief brings with it creates uneasy relationships.’
She added that Lindsay-Abaire included a new note in the latest edition of the play’s text.
‘The writer states that he doesn’t want hugging and tears.’
‘He’s worried, because there have been previous productions — not on Broadway! — where they’ve gone for the full crying, hugging, holding hands thing.
‘And he has put notes in the script where he says: “Please don’t make my play into this wet, soggy thing. Any tears should be brief, or withheld.” ’ She said she’d be performing as instructed.
Steadman possesses some of the sharpest comic timing in the business and has recently starred in television shows Inside No.9, Orphan Black and Boomers.
She has also appeared in countless plays but had been wondering, of late, whether she might give up the stage. Then Rabbit Hole landed in her lap.
The heartache comes in the way that Becca and her husband (to be played by Tom Goodman-Hill) have started to lead separate lives, with Becca removing anything and everything that reminds her of her son’s death.
Extraordinary things happen in Lindsay-Abaire’s beautifully written play, but I won’t offer any spoilers — though do seek out the fine film version, directed by John Cameron Mitchell and starring Nicole Kidman, Dianne Wiest and Aaron Eckhart, once you’ve seen the play.
Edward Hall will direct at the Hampstead. Other cast members include Georgina Rich, and Sean Delaney — a graduate of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art who is making his professional debut.