Memory House: Real Talk, Real Pie

In the time it takes to bake a pie — and much less time than it takes to write a college entrance essay — a mother and daughter can weave themselves together with a lifetime of loose ends.

In Kathleen Tolan’s sparkling and delicately sharpened script for Memory House, this seems the only way to do it: just spread it out, mix it up, knead it, heat things up and see if you get burned or something sweet at the finish.

A memory house is what teenage Katia (Natalia Payne) is supposed to describe in her college essay, due within hours but yet to be written.

With Katia in this single act play, set entirely in a single room, is Maggie (Kathy Baker), once a dancer, now a devoted mother. Maggie does make a pie on stage each night in this Vineyard Playhouse production, directed with verve and humor by Aquinnah seasonal resident Claudia Weill.

The pie is blueberry, though the play is set on New Year’s Eve, when blueberries have no business being on sale in New York city. Likewise, Maggie herself seems to have no business in the kitchen; she’s less a baker than a frustrated philosopher, reaching out to her child across the countertop.

The complexity of the script unfolds in layers some flaky, some juicy, some crumbling, some woven like a Martha Stewart lattice crust. There were plenty of laughs in the house on opening night, and some tears.

You don’t have to be a mother to enjoy it, but it helps to have had one. ­— Lauren Martin

Memory House runs Tuesday to Saturdays at the Vineyard Playhouse through Sept. 5. For details, call 508-696-6300.