Recommendation: Sort of worth seeing

Seattle Repertory Theatre's production Memory House gives new meaning to the term "kitchen sink theatre."

The set features a fully operational kitchen, including running water and an oven where one of the main characters bakes a blueberry pie from start to finish.

The set complements the hyper-realism of the play itself, which explores a mother-daughter relationship amid the struggles of baking and applying to college.

Katia (Sharia Pierce) was a Russian orphan who Maggie (Jeanne Paulsen) adopted and brought to America as a child. The play documents 90 minutes of their lives in which Katia tries to complete her personal statement for a college application and Maggie attempts to bake her first pie.

Katia's personal statement requires her to write about the memories she feels that define her as a person, bringing to the surface a number of questions about her ancestry and relationship with Maggie.

Pierce's depiction of a restless teenager is amusing, poignant and believable, while Paulsen's sense of wry humor adds depth to a mother somewhat disappointed in her own life.

"I can't believe I'm baking a pie," Maggie says at one point. "I used to be an interesting person."

The play is best when it deals with the United States' treatment of other countries and the process of Americans adopting foreign children. Katia identifies herself repeatedly as "loot" or the "spoils of war," which brings up interesting questions about the ethics of adopting children from impoverished nations.

She also hits a nerve when she accuses Maggie of trying to live vicariously through her, which even Maggie admits is true to some extent. While baking her pie and trying to help Katia finish her statement before its impending deadline, Maggie struggles to let her daughter live her own life while desperately wanting her to succeed.

Even though the Rep's production of Memory House is a study in good acting, it's hard to take away any significant message from it. Maybe that's not the point, or maybe playwright Kathleen Tolan just wanted the audience to think, "Wow, mother-daughter relationships sure are complicated."

The play is a good length and a solid, realistic slice of life, but whether you care to watch a brilliant depiction of something ordinary is a question you should ask yourself before you go.

Reach Intermission reporter Melissa Santos at melissasantos@thedaily.washington.edu.