Yes, a real pie is baked onstage during the performance. We'd call it a gimmick, but the theatre was crammed with moms and daughters for whom pie-making, apparently, inspired the same kind of emotion as going for it on 4th and 2 with 1:12 left to play. The flour-sifting, butter-chopping, dough-rolling, and pan-trimming met with hoots, gasps, sighs, and chuckles.

It may be a homespun metaphor, but who can say no to pie? Not us. This is a play to savor. It's funny, sharp-eyed, jolting, and incredibly warm-spirited. Mostly we loved Jeanne Paulsen and Sharia Pierce's performances. Pierce embodies, to borrow Annie Wagner's earlier description, "a perfect little rubbery being," and Paulsen's Maggie is so not the kind of mom to bake a pie that watching her bake one is like watching The Odd Couple, but with blueberries standing in for Felix.

The set-up is that it's New Year's Eve in New York, and single, divorced Maggie is upset that her daughter Katia hasn't finished her college application essay, with the postmark deadline just hours away. For Katia, adopted from a Russian orphanage, the questions about her personal history have stirred up a black thundercloud of anxiety. Since it's a holiday, you know there's going to be shouting and crying, but at first, everyone's trying to act chipper and snappy.

Kathleen Tolan's script throws in foreign adoption, divorce, class, culture shock, childhood emotional attachment, memory, Russian novels, and much more. It's not all "dealt with" -- sometimes it just hangs in the air briefly. (Sometimes it sounds too much like subtext or author's notes, instead of conversation.) We liked Allison Narver's use of space, and kinds of space, to define relationship (for example, Maggie's kitchen related to Katia's sofa -- adult industry vs. teen idleness).

Best of all, the play says what it wants to and shuts up. At about 80 minutes with no intermission, that still leaves plenty of time to grab a slice of pie at the B&O afterwards.

Memory House
Through December 17
Seattle Repertory Theatre
Tickets: $26-$40 ($10 for 25-and-under)
206-443-2222

Photo: Sharia Pierce playing Katia and Jeanne Paulsen playing Maggie in Kathleen Tolan’s Memory House at Seattle Repertory Theatre. Directed by Allison Narver. Photo copyright Chris Bennion 2006.