But by Act Two the predictability of the events, of the emotions, of the responses, of the reconciliations, was so obvious that I felt I'd seen the play before, which I hadn't. But of course I had, many times in movie after movie after TV show; this is Grief 101.

My companion for the evening, a world-famous medical anthropologist whose specialty is death and dying, was impressed by the accuracy of Act One: "The playwright got it," she said at intermission. "He lost it," she said at the end of the play.

Rabbit Hole is about a sad family; we meet them eight months after their 4-year-old son was killed by a car when he ran across the street after their dog. Howie (Brian Russell) works at a New York brokerage firm in risk management (give that half a second to sink in). His wife, Becca (Grace Gonglewski), is tense and unhappy. There is a wacky, pregnant sister (Julianna Zinkel) and a wackier mother (Janis Dardaris), who insists on making comparisons between the son she lost and the son her daughter lost - never mind that her son was an adult heroin-addict suicide. Clearly, Becca and Howie, in their beige normality and suburban clothes, are the odd ones in the family.

Once Jason (Aaron Stall), the sweet teen who was driving the car, shows up, the script goes exactly where we expect it to. His science-fiction story, published in his high school literary magazine, is dedicated to the dead boy. It is about rabbit holes into parallel universes and suggests an Alice-in-Wonderlandish approach - the very kind of offbeat tragicomedy Lindsay-Abaire gave us in his earlier Fuddy Meers. But all we get here is wistfulness. This literary bolstering continues with Becca's book-club selection, Bleak House, and the son's favorite baby book, Runaway Bunny.

The formulaic quality of the script is matched by the formulaic quality of the acting: This is not a family of people but a cast of actors who cry, get enraged, and hug on cue. The set is so lacking in nuance that except for wrenching moments in the boy's room - removing the toys, the robot sheets - there is no clue of who these people are. Except in sociology textbooks, it is individuals who feel grief, individually; it is not a class action.

There is much fake crying and eating of baked goods and endless folding of laundry. As performed, this is soothing domesticity, without edge or rage; it soothes not only the characters, but the audience. That's what makes this a crowd-pleaser: a consolatory play, all rawness salved.

Rabbit Hole

Through Dec. 20 at the Arden Theatre, 40 N. Second St. Tickets: $29-48. Information: 215-922-1122 or www.ardentheatre.org.