Over the course of the play "Memory House," actress Anne Scurria bakes a blueberry pie.
"Baking becomes an essential part of the rehearsal process," says Curt Columbus, director of the Trinity Repertory Company production that begins performances tonight. "But we don't usually eat the pies," Columbus adds. Instead they've sent them up to the company's "Christmas Carol" cast. "It's a passive-aggressive thing," he says with a laugh.
Passive-aggressive behavior is part of the charm of Kathleen Tolan's "Memory House," a comedy/drama in which a mother and her adopted daughter spar on New Year's Eve as the teenager struggles to finish her college application essay and mail it by midnight. Tackling the assignment brings up all sorts of identity issues for the girl as she remembers the Russian orphanage of her early years - and for her mother, who is grappling with her own recent divorce.
Trinity Rep commissioned "Memory House" under former artistic director Oskar Eustis with Scurria in mind and subsequently workshopped it, but the play had several other stagings - including a New York production starring Dianne Wiest - before coming home to Providence.
"I don't know if it fell through the cracks or if it just didn't fit into the season," says Columbus by phone. "The young actress who did the workshop with Anne graduated from our conservatory, and Anne didn't want to do the play without her because you have to have just the right emotional connection. I'd seen a few productions of it, but it didn't really move me until I saw Susannah Flood play Emily in our production of 'Our Town' [last season] and Anne agreed she'd be a perfect partner."
Columbus says that the play could easily slip into a TV family sitcom style, but that the role models for its characters are actually in Chekhov, in which 95 percent of what's going on is unsaid.
"If you underplay the sweetness and add some of the lemon, it's mean and funny," he says. "There's a notion here that you can take the gloves off with this play. The truth is that I don't have a particularly fluid relationship with my own mother. Like a lot of other people, we love them desperately, but we don't want to be in a room with them for too long."
Award-winning scenic designer Eugene Lee has created a set, Columbus says, that plays on the notion of memory. "In your memory, you only have the things that are necessary to tell the story," Columbus says. "Objects of furniture are simply placed in a space, and Eugene has put two clocks onstage because time is the real pressure in the story."
And the pie?
"The pie is so gorgeoso," says Columbus. "There is something magical about creating something from scratch, from the simplest ingredients of blueberries, flour, lard, sugar, and lemon."
At Trinity Repertory Company, Providence, tonight through Jan. 6. Tickets: $20-$60. 401-351-4242, trinityrep.com
New look for 'Carol'
Finding ways to present the holiday classic "A Christmas Carol" is an annual challenge for area theater companies. The trick is to freshen the production without disappointing audiences' expectations.
North Shore Music Theatre's 19th annual "Carol," written by outgoing producing artistic director Jon Kimbell, addresses this challenge with practical considerations in mind. Scene changes require onstage human assistance, but how to do it without stopping the action? Kimbell says that when he first adapted the story, he was inspired by buskers in London, where he'd trained.
"I also knew I wanted to introduce a gentler idea of a spirit before the children in the audience were frightened by the ghost of Marley," he says. "The Pearlies," as Kimbell calls his spirits, helped with scene changes, but were occasionally more distracting than effective.
This year Kimbell turned to his "Beauty and the Beast" choreographer, John MacInnis, to reimagine the Pearlies' role.
"I'd never worked on 'A Christmas Carol' before," says Medford native MacInnis, "but I immediately knew they had to be less about dance and more about helping to tell the story."
MacInnis, whose experience ranges from the Rockettes to the 2002 Winter Olympics, says he drew on Cirque de Soleil and Pilobolus as inspiration. "The three Pearlies make their entrance by sliding down on silks from above," he says, "which makes it clear they are very ethereal. Then their roles are much more about athletic lifting, and the kind of modern dance poses of Pilobolus. They become a table or a coat rack and at one point create a writhing pig pile."
Tonight through Dec. 23. Tickets: $45-$70. 978-232-7200, nsmt.org
Lift every voice
"Black Nativity," Langston Hughes's gospel song-play, is celebrating its 38th consecutive season in Boston. Presented by the National Center of Afro-American Artists, this year's production of verse, scripture, music, and dance is dedicated to the late John Andrew Ross for his 36 years as musical director of "Black Nativity." At Tremont Temple, 88 Tremont St., tonight through Dec. 16. 800-514-3849, blacknativity.org
Notes
Actor's Shakespeare Project has moved its five-person production of "Henry V" from Jimmy Tingle's Off-Broadway Theater to Downstairs at the Garage, 38 JFK St., Harvard Square, Cambridge. The play, which runs Jan. 12-Feb. 3, had to move after Tingle's Somerville theater closed at the end of October. Tickets: $30-$42. 866-811-4111, actorsshakespearepro ject.org . . . Shakespeare & Company hosts a benefit reading of a new play by award-winning writer/producer David Black ("Law & Order") tomorrow at 7:30 p.m. in the Founders Theatre. Actors performing in the reading of "An Impossible Life," based on Black's autobiographical novel, include Peter Riegert and Ray Abruzzo of "The Sopranos." Tickets: $30-$75. 413-637-3353, shakespeare.org. . . . New Repertory Theatre has announced that stage and film star Rachel York ("Kiss Me, Kate," "City of Angels") will be a special guest star at the company's annual gala on May 6. York will perform songs from her cabaret act "For the Love of It." 617-923-8487, newrep.org.
