Chris Bacarella
The audience was packed wall to wall, while smells of fresh apples and cinnamon wafted over the room.
On a blustery November night, I am tromping up the steps of an east-side Victorian, where Gwendolyn Rice, an Isthmus theater critic, is performing Miss American Pie, her one-woman show that improbably combines a critique of anti-immigrant racism with a lesson in baking apple rum raisin pie.
It feels like we’re arriving at a house party when Hazel, the daughter of director and host Jen Plants, greets us at the door to check our names against the reservation list. We add our shoes to a mound in the entryway, and heap our coats in the bedroom.
The audience of 20 is crammed into the kitchen and dining room, facing a granite island prepped with a bowlful of apples, a food processor and various implements. Rice enters, wearing a kerchief and apron with “Maggie” embroidered on it.
The monologue begins on election night 2016 when Maggie receives a middle-of-the-night phone call from Saiyna, a Pakistani photographer, who is being harassed by drunken racists while on assignment at Donald Trump’s Madison victory party.
Afterward, Maggie can’t sleep, so she starts to do what she always does to calm herself: bake pie. She makes crust (she believes in 100 percent butter, no lard or Crisco, for the shortening), while recalling highlights of her friendship with Saiyna. The two journalists met while paired up for freelance food reviews for a local newspaper. (Much of this is inspired by a real-life friendship, Rice tells me later.)
Fast forward to the present, and Maggie wants to send Saiyna, who’s back in Pakistan, a video, teaching her how to bake a pie, in part, as a way of compensating for the crappy treatment the Muslim woman received after Trump was elected and proposed his Muslim travel ban.
Maggie uses a paring knife to peel the Granny Smith apples with one masterful swirl. Then she dives into the history of Virginia Dare, the first English child born in the American colonies. Her name and the myth of the “lost colony” of Roanoke, Virginia, is evoked by white supremacists and anti-immigration activists, including on the anti-immigration website VDARE.com.
And just when it all starts to get too heavy, Maggie shows us how to make a beautiful lattice crust; she’s using her mom’s rolling pin.
Throughout this history/baking lesson the smell of butter, apples and cinnamon begin to waft through the house. The smells are comforting, but the material is not.
Afterward, Rice explains how she became “the pie lady” after she and her now-husband Joe came across rhubarb at the farmers’ market. She found a recipe for strawberry-rhubarb pie, and the rest is history: “He just flipped out. I believe that was the moment that he decided that he would wed me,” says Rice.
The piece came together, she says, after years of relying on others to make her plays come alive. “I have gone to readings where I show up and what I had written and what was presented were so drastically different that it made my heart break a little bit,” says Rice.
Her idea began to gel after she read a New York Times article about the play Oh My Sweet Land, about the Syrian refugee crisis. Written and directed by a Palestinian, Amir Nizar Zuabi, it has been performed in dozens of kitchens. The main character prepares kibbe, a staple part of many Middle Eastern cuisines.
Rice and Plants received funds for a one-week residency in Philadelphia, where they workshopped the script. Once back home, Rice had to memorize and learn to time the baking with the monologue. “It gave me a new appreciation for the actors and directors that I work with, because their job is harder than I remember,” says Rice. “Even in a one-woman show, there are so many moving parts.”
While the smells of comfort and home float over us, we are faced with a great deal of unresolved feelings, just like Maggie.
As the piece winds up, she offers us slices of pie. The very notion of “home sweet home” is called into question, as we sit in relative comfort in a friendly kitchen, thinking about what it means to be an American.
Performances of American Pie: 3
Seats at each performance: 20
Year the “lost” Roanoke Colony was founded: 1587
Varieties of Virginia Dare wine sampled at the first read-through: 3
People who declined a piece of pie after the show: 2
People who opted for a small piece: 0
Sticks of butter used in each show: 5
Apples called for in the recipe: 6
Number Rice peels while talking: 4
Number of pies baked while rehearsing the show: 11
Apple Rum Raisin Pie
Pie Crust:
2 sticks (1 cup) cold butter
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
5-7 tablespoons ice water
Filling:
3 tablespoons dark rum
1/3 cup golden raisins
2/3 cup packed light brown sugar
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon fresh lemon zest
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon salt
6 medium Granny Smith apples
1 tablespoon unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
2 tablespoons cream
1 tablespoon cinnamon sugar
Make dough:
Cut butter into pieces. In a food processor blend or pulse together flour, salt and butter until mixture resembles coarse meal. Add 5 tablespoons ice water and pulse just until mixture forms a dough, adding additional ice water, a little at a time, if dough is too dry. Divide dough in half and flatten each piece into a disk. Chill dough, wrapped in plastic wrap, 30 minutes.
Make filling:
Bring rum with raisins to a boil in a saucepan, then remove from heat and let stand, covered, until rum is absorbed. Preheat oven to 350°F.
Rub together brown sugar, flour, zest, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt with your fingers in a large bowl until no lumps remain. Peel and core apples, then cut into ¼- to ½-inch-wide wedges and add to sugar mixture, tossing gently to coat. Add raisins with any liquid and toss until combined.
Roll out first piece of dough into a 13-inch round on a lightly floured surface with a lightly floured rolling pin. Fit into a 9-inch pie plate and trim edge, leaving a 1-inch overhang. Spoon filling evenly into shell, then dot top with butter.
Roll out other piece of dough on a lightly floured surface with lightly floured rolling pin. Cut dough into half-inch strips and weave them into a lattice pattern on top of the pie. Then press edges together and crimp decoratively. Lightly brush top of pie with cream and sprinkle all over with cinnamon sugar.
Bake pie until crust is golden and filling is bubbling, 60-75 minutes. Let cool and serve.
