David Lindsay-Abaire's Pulitzer Prize-winning Rabbit Hole is a carefully observed, lovingly detailed study of the effect of a child's death on his family and others near to him. If the subject sounds too somber to make an enjoyable drama, let me assure you that the current Jobsite Theater production is poignantly engaging.

Compassionately directed by Paul Potenza, it introduces us to four of the infant's family members – his parents, aunt and grandmother – as well to the teenaged driver who hit and killed him while swerving to avoid his dog. All these persons have been shattered by the death of four-year-old Danny, though his mother Becca is having the hardest time recovering.

Everything reminds her of her lost son, and as the play progresses she tries to rid herself of all objects that bring him, painfully, to mind: his clothes, his toys, his dog, even her own house. Opposing her to a degree is her husband Howie, who positively wants the reminders, and who's ready, eight months after the tragedy, to resume something like a normal existence.

This article appears in Jun 3-9, 2009.