Julia and Patricia share the home where their mother passed. Patricia has a white-collar job with a good salary. Julia’s vocation as a teacher is more lofty. When she learns Patricia has landed a shot on the Flip & Fix show she’s appalled. The show refurbishes weary houses then markets them for a sizable profit. At least that’s the hope.
The chipper host arrives with a versatile crew. Gradually, details are revealed: demolition, culpability, cultural appropriation. Julia and Patricia fight over the actual past of the house that ties them to their identity. Patricia is dismissive of Julia’s fanciful notions of spell casting, miraculous intervention, and familial ghosts who visit once a year. Patricia is pragmatic and Julia’s intoxicated. As the game goes forward so does the pillaging of misery and regret. Seemingly innocuous entertainment becomes a kind of cannibalism. Articles of Patricia’s aspect are another opportunity for Flip & Fix to idolize and feed off her identity.
Playwright Eliana Pipes creates a central metaphor for monetizing and trivializing the enigma of ancestry and recollection. The sacrament of cherishing loved ones and community. Patricia, like so many, craves a future without dread or exhaustion . The past, sketchy and too often painful, is no substitute for security. But, like D. H. Lawrence’s Rocking Horse Winner, the more you earn, the more you need. As Dream House takes one turn and another, we watch their personal artifacts and clues to their past, starve and crumble.
Dream House is a marvel of blocking and choreography (without dance) and tone shift. The intersection of grieving and sunshine and rapaciousness might be clarity or bedlam. There’s a kick in the head when we see Clare Floyd DeVries’ splendid set utterly destroyed before our eyes. Dream House dazzles with layers of perception, motivation and yes, resignation. Do we survive by trading in our complexity and uniqueness or do we forfeit it?
Kitchen Dog Theater presents Dream House playing through May 3rd, 2026. 4774 Algiers Street, Dallas, Texas 75207. kitchendogtheater.org. 214-953-1055.