Memory House

by Kathleen Tolan

One winter night a woman bakes a pie as a girl tries to finish her college essay. As the deadline looms, unexamined issues of the girl's adoption from Russia, the rupture of her parents divorce, and the fear of leaving home break through the surface as the mother cajoles, deflects, and maneuvers around her own feelings of sadness and loss. Unfolding in real time, Memory House is about a young and an older woman who are forced to grapple with the past as they face an uncertain future. A funny and moving story about the complexity of living in the world today.

"A captivating emotional ballet that is also a moving demonstration of the strenuous work that goes into good mothering." - The New York Times

Genres: Plays

59 pages, paperback

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Kathleen Tolan worked for years as an actor. Her plays include A Weekend Near Madison, Kate's Diary, Approximating Mother, A Girl's Life and The Wax. They have been produced in regional theatres (including Trinity Repertory Theatre and the Actors Theatre of Louisville), in New York (including Playwrights Horizons, The Public Theatre and the Women's Project) and in Europe. She has received various commissions and awards. Her translation of Marivaux's False Servant was recently produced by the Classic Stage Company. She is the recipient of the 2005 McKnight National Residency and Commission. She is a member of the Writers Guild, the Dramatists Guild and PEN. She teaches playwriting at SUNY Purchase. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Reviews

[Martin Denton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Maggie, once a dancer, is now a harried office worker, a woman neither more nor less unhappy or uncomfortable with her place in life than the norm. Her problem centers around her teenage daughter Katia. It's 9pm on New Years Eve, and the deadline for Katia to postmark her admissions application to a prestigious university is just three hours away. But Katia has still not finished the essay, which calls for her to describe her "memory house"--the virtual structure where she stores her memories, dreams, and aspirations. She's blocked, or says she is: Maggie needs to talk her out of her funk so that at least this one seemingly momentous decision won't be allowed to go the wrong way.

Katia is not Maggie's natural child; she was at an orphanage in Russia in the mid-1980s when Maggie and her then-husband decided, following years of traditional attempts, to adopt. Katia was about four or five years old at the time, and although her new parents encouraged her to learn about her own history and heritage (and to not lose her facility with the Russian language), she mostly didn't do any of this. Now, today, faced with the memory house question, she's mad--at herself, at her parents--for her lack of knowledge about who she is (though her actions peg her, with great precision, as a very typically spoiled American teenager).

So Katia rails and wails about not knowing her birth mother and how she and other Russian orphans are the spoils of Reagan's "war" against the Soviet Union and how America has turned into a terrible bully in the world community. Maggie can agree with much of what Katia says and might even be glad to chat with her about it. But, emphatically, not tonight: tonight she needs to stop whining and finish her stinking essay.

Maggie is much more patient than I would be in her shoes. Memory House resolves nothing about Katia's anxieties about her past or future, and certainly offers no useful prescriptions for improving the moral reputation of the United States in the international community, but it does succeed in demonstrating that its leading character is a remarkable mother. Maggie guides her adopted offspring through the little crisis with tremendous skill and love, and Katia is as good as in college by the time the curtain falls.

The play exists mainly to provide the actor cast as Maggie with a great role to play.

[Wayne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Inevitably to tears...