The Mourning After

Be sure to pack some Kleenex before heading out to the opening of David Lindsay-Abaire's Rabbit Hole at the Cleveland Play House tonight. "When I saw it in New York, there was not a dry eye in the house," says director Michael Bloom. "People were moved." The two-act, 10-tissue play is about a family coping with the death of a child. "Everybody deals with family loss," says Bloom. "It's a basic condition of life."

Taking a cue from the play's critically acclaimed Broadway run (which starred Sex and the City alum Cynthia Nixon and sitcom regular John Slattery), this production casts TV actors Nancy Bell (Chicago Hope) and Danton Stone (Oz) as the grieving couple. They're left to pick up the pieces after a car accident kills their four-year-old son. "I first read [the play] on the way to a funeral," says Bloom. "It opens a window into the process of healing after loss, in a place you almost never see."
Tuesdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2 p.m. Starts: Sept. 15. Continues through Oct. 8