Rabbit Hole

It’s a strange day to be a Kid Cudi fan. With the release of “Perfect is the Word,” the Cleveland rapper has officially taken the ill-advised route of ditching hip-hop for droning, dreary rock ‘n’ roll. Cudi’s fascination with rock is nothing new (his best song, “Pursuit of Happiness,” features MGMT and Ratatat, while “Erase Me” is built around cheesy Weezer guitars), but “Perfect is the Word” is an entirely different, ultimately ugly beast. Along with producer Dot Da Genius, Cudder is fronting a rock project titled 2 Be Continuum (clearly the music isn’t the only problem)

It's 3:37 p.m., and 2-year-old Hattie's right leg is covered in melted SpongeBob SquarePants. She came by the cartoon-shaped ice cream less than 10 minutes before at a roving stand near the intersection of Mount Royal and Lafayette avenues. Hattie hadn't eaten much when the treat puddled in her lap, devoured by the sun's mid-80s heat. Behind her in a two-kid stroller, her brother Will, 4, was doing a bit better with his ice cream sandwich, as were their cousins, Zeb and Fiona, ages 3 and 5, respectively, who were stumbling alongside their mother and aunt.

"I don't know where you want this discussion to go." Anyone in any relationship has said such words at some point, trying to gauge the safest response, struggling to figure out what the other person wants to hear, wondering if it is better to be elusive than honest. But when that line is spoken by a husband to his wife in David Lindsay-Abaire's 2007 Pulitzer Prize-winning drama, "Rabbit Hole," it registers with a deep pain. For these characters, every word is a land mine, capable of setting off the most dreadful reactions; every conversation, even on the most mundane of topics, can trigger a dangerous mood.

It’s a strange day to be a Kid Cudi fan. With the release of “Perfect is the Word,” the Cleveland rapper has officially taken the ill-advised route of ditching hip-hop for droning, dreary rock ‘n’ roll. Cudi’s fascination with rock is nothing new (his best song, “Pursuit of Happiness,” features MGMT and Ratatat, while “Erase Me” is built around cheesy Weezer guitars), but “Perfect is the Word” is an entirely different, ultimately ugly beast. Along with producer Dot Da Genius, Cudder is fronting a rock project titled 2 Be Continuum (clearly the music isn’t the only problem)

One of the worst things about any big trouble is the way it isolates us at the precise moment we're most in need of comfort. It matters not one whit if the people sharing our dinner table or office cubicle are going through the identical crisis, because no two traumas are exactly the same. Every loss, every grief is as individual and specifically coded as a set of fingerprints.

The second presentation of Colonial Players' 60th anniversary season of plays celebrating love is David Lindsay-Abaire's 2006 Pulitzer Prize-winning drama Rabbit Hole, which takes an unflinching look at a couple coping with the accidental death of their 4-year-old son. Rabbit Hole stirs the senses and is enlightening in its portrayal of family members - husband and wife and her sister and mother unable to help each other as they each work alone through...

On a dark night, in a dark theater, on a dark stage, an 11-year-old girl is drowning in a sea of white. She languidly flaps her arms in a lazy backstroke as yards and yards of silky, swirling parachute fabric is whipped into tidal waves by a cast of eight circling dancers. Alice is drowning in her own tears. Cockeysville Middle School sixth-grader Caroline Cohen, who plays Alice, is the youngest dancer in this troupe earnestly rehearsing danceRINK's version of Alice in Wonderland at the Theatre Project.

The Baltimore Shakespeare Festival's "Picnic in the Park" may have preceded its first outdoor performance of Much Ado About Nothing -- but the event had all the beginnings of The Tempest. A huge thunderstorm the night before demolished much of the set. After a day of intense repair and reconstruction, what had been a 14-foot backdrop was now only 8 feet. In addition, festival artistic director James Kinstle had stepped into a rabbit hole during the maelstrom, leaving him hobbling around the evening with a sprained ankle.

"Time Travel in Einstein's Universe: The Physical Possibilities of Travel Through Time," by J. Richard Gott. Houghton Mifflin. 291 pages. $25. Richard Gott must be the only Princeton astrophysicist to make both the journal Nature and the Proceedings of the Vulcan Science Academy. Fantasy, astronomy and rare equations dance like sugar plums under his hand. Thankfully, Gott is a fine writer. His reading audience learns quickly that the most obtuse concepts can be personable companions. With Gott as guide, almost anyone can join Einstein as a fellow traveler down the astonishing road of time travel.

Words seem to drift to the ground and carpet the stage of God's Ear like the ashes that are the fallout of a devastating fire. Taken individually, the banalities and cliches are gray, weightless, inconsequential. But gradually they accumulate into a mass that simultaneously obliterates all the objects in the surrounding landscape and reminds us of their existence. If audiences leave the Rep Stage production feeling drained, exhausted and numbed, it's because playwright Jenny Schwartz re-creates the grieving process with an almost cruel fidelity.

At least since the first petals of the counterculture bloomed across Europe and the United States in the 1960s, it has been fashionable to affirm that all religions are beautiful and all are true. This claim, which reaches back to "All Religions Are One" (1795) by the English poet, printmaker, and prophet William Blake, is as odd as it is intriguing. The most popular metaphor for this view portrays the great religions as different paths up the same mountain. "It is possible to climb life's mountain from any side, but when the top is reached the trails converge," writes philosopher of religion Huston Smith.

One pill makes you larger and one pill makes you small, and the pills Tim Burton gives you don't do very much at all. With apologies to the Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit," that more or less sums up "Alice in Wonderland," the director's middling new version of the Lewis Carroll tale. It has its successful moments but it's surprisingly inert overall, more like a Burton derivative than something he actually did himself. Through no fault of its own, "Alice" also has the misfortune of being the first major 3-D release to come out after the "Avatar" revolution, and when you add in that Burton chose to shoot in 2D and have the footage converted, it inevitably plays like one of the last gasps of the old-fashioned ways of doing things.

"I don't know where you want this discussion to go." Anyone in any relationship has said such words at some point, trying to gauge the safest response, struggling to figure out what the other person wants to hear, wondering if it is better to be elusive than honest. But when that line is spoken by a husband to his wife in David Lindsay-Abaire's 2007 Pulitzer Prize-winning drama, "Rabbit Hole," it registers with a deep pain. For these characters, every word is a land mine, capable of setting off the most dreadful reactions; every conversation, even on the most mundane of topics, can trigger a dangerous mood.

Everyman Theatre announced a 2009-2010 season that bucks a national trend by staging at least one large-cast show, and by increasing the theatrical "extras" available to customers. Highlights of the next subscription season include: * Rabbit Hole, Sept. 9-Oct. 11. The Baltimore premiere of David Lindsey-Abaire's Pulitzer Prize-winning drama is a harrowing look at how the death of a child can pull a family apart. * The Mystery of Irma Vep, Nov. 11-Dec. 13. This satire of penny dreadfuls by playwright Charles Ludlam will feature actor Bruce Nelson.

Words seem to drift to the ground and carpet the stage of God's Ear like the ashes that are the fallout of a devastating fire. Taken individually, the banalities and cliches are gray, weightless, inconsequential. But gradually they accumulate into a mass that simultaneously obliterates all the objects in the surrounding landscape and reminds us of their existence. If audiences leave the Rep Stage production feeling drained, exhausted and numbed, it's because playwright Jenny Schwartz re-creates the grieving process with an almost cruel fidelity.

The second presentation of Colonial Players' 60th anniversary season of plays celebrating love is David Lindsay-Abaire's 2006 Pulitzer Prize-winning drama Rabbit Hole, which takes an unflinching look at a couple coping with the accidental death of their 4-year-old son. Rabbit Hole stirs the senses and is enlightening in its portrayal of family members - husband and wife and her sister and mother unable to help each other as they each work alone through...

At least since the first petals of the counterculture bloomed across Europe and the United States in the 1960s, it has been fashionable to affirm that all religions are beautiful and all are true. This claim, which reaches back to "All Religions Are One" (1795) by the English poet, printmaker, and prophet William Blake, is as odd as it is intriguing. The most popular metaphor for this view portrays the great religions as different paths up the same mountain. "It is possible to climb life's mountain from any side, but when the top is reached the trails converge," writes philosopher of religion Huston Smith.

Everyman Theatre announced a 2009-2010 season that bucks a national trend by staging at least one large-cast show, and by increasing the theatrical "extras" available to customers. Highlights of the next subscription season include: * Rabbit Hole, Sept. 9-Oct. 11. The Baltimore premiere of David Lindsey-Abaire's Pulitzer Prize-winning drama is a harrowing look at how the death of a child can pull a family apart. * The Mystery of Irma Vep, Nov. 11-Dec. 13. This satire of penny dreadfuls by playwright Charles Ludlam will feature actor Bruce Nelson.

One of the worst things about any big trouble is the way it isolates us at the precise moment we're most in need of comfort. It matters not one whit if the people sharing our dinner table or office cubicle are going through the identical crisis, because no two traumas are exactly the same. Every loss, every grief is as individual and specifically coded as a set of fingerprints.