QUARRY Players roll into 2011 with a hot new play that took Tony Awards and 2007’s Pulitzer Prize for Drama when it launched on Broadway. Rabbit Hole, David Lindsay-Abaire’s play in question, is now a movie starring Nicole Kidman and is set for release shortly. It’s our pleasure to have a chance to see Rabbit Hole in theatre form at Belltable Arts Centre over five nights, Tuesday February 8 to Saturday 12, 8pm.
Quarry Players acknowledged the heavyweight history Rabbit Hole in their appointment of Dara Carolan as director. He’s an actor and playwright himself who has worked internationally, and directed Jimmy Murphy and Alan Bennett plays in 2010 for professional companies. It is Carolan’s idea to train his Limerick cast of five in the Meisner Technique for this modern day story of a family bereft by sudden hazard.
Arts page looked for enlightenment to actor Zeb Moore as Howie Corbett, husband to Becca (Michelle O’Flanagan); son of Nat (Bernie Hayes) and father of Izzy (Niamh O’Meara). Jason (Conor J Ryan) is architect of the deadly accident.
“That Dara is living in Dublin and working with us is giving rehearsals a real intensity, “ says Moore. “By that I mean we are working on Rabbit Hole on Friday nights and all day Saturday and Sunday, six to eight hour days. Meisner Technique is about getting people to deliver a line and action truthfully, to carry the subtext and emotion based on truthful action with other characters”.
Repetition is one of the tools used in the complex development of what best serves the play. For example, actors say a line over and over again until the inflection that rings most naturally with the tone of the scene is found. Actors ‘feed’ off each other incrementally, following a ‘listen and respond’ sequence to create action and characters that live truthfully in the imaginary circumstance that is drama. It is a dynamic based on increasing revelation, and a novel experience for some of the actors.
“I have done various workshops with Dara and other people, worked on film and on plays as actor and director, and Meisner is new to me,” admits Zeb. “There are supposed to be five stages to grief and the five characters in Rabbit Hole seem to be each at a different level of grief, these being shock, denial, anger, blame and acceptance”.
He makes the point that The Corbetts are an ordinary family; Rabbit Hole is not about the clichés and sadness of death, there are laughs and humour in it as the family goes on.
“John B Keane it’s not and Dara wants us to play it completely on a natural basis”.
Book at 69 O’Connell Street, February 8 to 12.
