“Ballard House Duet” is the new “custom made play” written by Paul Mullin and starring Hana Lass and Rebecca Olsen, now showing at Washington Ensemble Theatre.
It chronicles the estranged relationship between two sisters who are forced to reconnect after the hospitalization of the their aunt, an extreme hoarder, who has spent decades collecting everything under the sun, from Beach Boys albums to carpet mushrooms, in her house located in Ballard.
Holly is the adopted child of the family; she is extremely religious, introverted and shut off from others. The other sister, on the other hand, is outgoing, ambitious, and very open about everything in her life, — to a fault. She works in the television industry and aspires to be an Oprah-like talk show host where she can expose people’s private lives, especially since she hates secrets.
The playwright follows the the two sister’s relationship throughout their lives via a series of flashback and flash forward scenes which go all the way back to their earliest days as little girls when they had to deal with an adopted uncle who was a little too fond of taking pictures of them as they performed song and dance routines in the basement of their aunt’s house; it then flash forwards to scenes when the women are grown with careers, children, ex-husbands, and eventually, a hereditary terminal illness.
In terms of the acting, both women are excellent in their roles; they are honest, natural, and engaging in their interpretation. They do a great job of playing the characters at the various stages in their lives and are never too trite, exaggerated, or clichéd.
As for the script itself, it has some very raw and realistic dialogue, with a lot of psychological weightiness, and I would say that this is its greatest strength. The playwright captures, quite remarkably, the strain, tension, love, and complications of dealing with family.
However, the dramaturgical structure could use some refining. The flashbacks and flash forwards create a “jerky” and fragmented effect, which diminishes the otherwise strength of the play’s dialogue and subject matter. The ending, in particular, needs to be completely reworked, as it is abrupt and does not really culminate into anything dynamic or transcendent.
Of course, this weakness in the script could perhaps be overcome if the staging had been more developed. The galley-like set-up of the theatre’s house, where the audience sits on both sides of the stage, did not serve the play well. The sound design, which signaled the flashbacks and flash forwards, was functional but not very inventive, and the lighting design was merely basic and did not help at all to “tighten” the loose script.
However, this IS a good show. As I said, the subject matter, the dialogue, and the acting were all very good, but I was left feeling that there was a lot of potential here, but that some editing and revising was very much needed. The production came across more as a “work in progress” rather than a fully realized final production.
“Ballard House Duet” is now showing at Washington Ensemble Theatre on the corner of Mercer and 19th Ave. E. until December 17. Tickets are on-line at washingtonensemble.org.