Mary Wright and her daughter Katie Willmorth invite audiences into their kitchen and what a delightful visit it is in "Kitchen Chronicles" at Touchstone Theatre in Bethlehem through Feb. 20.
The show, the culmination of a multi-year story-gathering and performance project led by Wright a Touchstone Ensemble Member, is joyous, touching, heartbreaking and piercingly honest. We can see ourselves in these women.
Wright and Willmorth play mother and daughter Martha and Cassie but it feels as personal as if you were sitting in their own kitchen.
Wright was intrigued by the role the kitchen plays in multiple generations of a familys life and in "Kitchen Chronicles," the family dynamic between mother and adult daughter is very much at the forefront. Also influencing events is the unseen, but ever-present through artifacts and recipes, third generation of Marthas mother and Cassies grandmother.
Willmorth portrays a toddler hero-worshiping her mother through a rolling-her-eyes teen who defiantly refuses to put sugar in her coffee because thats how mom likes it.
Finally she is a slightly lost 30-year-old returning to the nest after being laid off, and is both comforted by the familiar items in the kitchen and determined to put her mark on the space.
With humor and heart, Wright and Willmorth explore the push and pull between generations as the two women struggle over whose kitchen it is, even coming to comical slow motion blows at one point.
By the end the two women have, not surprisingly, reversed roles.
In the surprisingly roomy and welcoming kitchen built on the small Touchstone stage by Emma Ackerman and Chris Egging, Wright and Willmorth share morning cups of coffee, late night tea and toast and even wine is poured as they contemplate hopes, discoveries, struggles, disappointment and despair, as well as the simple joy of making your mothers bread recipe.
The legacy of family recipes is a recurring theme, and touchstones are a book of handwritten recipes for "old-fashioned" dishes like green bean casserole with water chestnuts and dessert fluff made with Cool Whip and Jell-o powder, and the all-too-familiar red covered Betty Crocker Cookbook.
As these artifacts are carefully "archived" by mysterious researchers, they invoke "nostalgia moments" in the women, and in the audience as well,
When a storm puts out the electric and disrupts the daughters planned ZOOM interview for a job, tensions between mother and daughter rise.
There is a whimsical side as well with Wright and Willmorth unintentionally conjuring a pair of (kitchen') witches with candles, an incantation which is actually a verbal practical joke Martha played on Cassie when she was little and an alter made of a vintage mixer and the heirloom cookbook.
Everyone will recognize moments in the kitchen from their own lives, in Wright and Willmorths loving and heartfelt tribute to the under sung heart of the home.
Performances are 2 p.m. Feb. 13 and 20 and 8 p.m. Feb. 17-19.
Proof of vaccination and masks are required.
Tickets are $25 for adults and $15 for seniors and students. Thursdays show is pay-what-you-will.
For information, call 610-867-1689 or go to touchstone.org.