By Ed Lowe
Senior Writer
Victory Gardens opened its fall season with the Chicago premier of an intense production of "Memory House," a play written by Kathleen Tolan and directed by Sandy Shinner. The story can be approached from several different perspectives. A mother (played by daytime TV veteran Taylor Miller) and her adopted daughter (Cassandra Bissell) have reached a critical point in their relationship. The plot revolves around the daughter's need to prepare an essay for college admission and the mother's need to reconcile her daughter's departure with her own recent divorce.
On another level, Bissell had been adopted at age eight from a Russian orphanage. The topic of the essay requires a re-inspection of her "memory house," that place where special memories of earlier times have been stored and are available to each of us. But looking in that special "house" is a painful and sometimes traumatic experience and the daughter is reluctant to face that period of her life. Bissell, who comes to Victory Gardens after a stint with the Peninsula Players in Door County, Wisconsin, is a Chicago native who grew up in Hyde Park and attended the University of Chicago.
Tolan's crisp dialog establishes the contemporary aspect of the relationship and, except for some too-glib one-liner comments early in the play, it permits the nature of their unique relationship to be exposed to the audience. That aside, the pain of the impending separation, coupled with the complexities of the interplay between adoptee and adopter and the pains caused by the recent divorce, all feed the dramatic intensity of the play.
Robert Martin's set is a comfortable fit into an upper middle class apartment (in New York) where mother can pass along her somewhat truncated culinary skills to her daughter, while the two agonize over the contents of the "memory house" that will have to be inspected in order to complete the essay by its midnight deadline.
Victory Gardens is located at 2257 N. Lincoln Ave. The play is scheduled to run through Oct. 23, and tickets are scaled from $35 to $40. "Memory House" runs from Tuesday through Sunday, with some Wednesday and Sunday matinees. Call the box office at (773) 871-3000 for specific dates and times of the performances. |
