The title for Memory House comes from an asinine essay assignment for a college application: Describe your "memory house," the place where you keep your, you know, memories. Katia (Sharia Pierce) knows it's an asinine question in her intuitive but inarticulate 18-year-old way and uses all her teenage tricks to resist writing the essay. Her single, working mother Maggie (Jeanne Paulsen) also suspects it's asinine in her tired, cynical way, but uses all her motherly tricks to get the essay written—the application must be postmarked that night and the post offices close in a matter of hours. Meanwhile, she is trying to bake a blueberry pie and deflect the hard questions Katia (who was adopted from Russia) lobs from the couch: Why did you and dad get divorced? Why is he a successful professor and you're a washed-up dancer with a boring office job? Why did you buy me from Russia instead of adopting a needy American child? Why are you so sad and lonely? When are you going to get a life?

Each is superficially trying to achieve something—the essay, the pie, staying out of each other's hair. ("You do your thing, I'll do mine" is the defeatist refrain of their cold war.) And each is trying to make her task meaningful. If Katia could accurately describe her memory house, she would understand who she is. If Maggie could bake a nice blueberry pie, she would feel that she had produced a neat, orderly thing to counterbalance her messy life and messier daughter sulking on the couch, who is sabotaging her own life with every passing minute that the essay doesn't get written.

The script, by Kathleen Tolan, is good, but the acting is better. Sharia Pierce nails the bitchy high schooler, authentically sulking, arguing, spitefully blasting Eminem, and occasionally letting down her put-out façade and granting Mom access to her tempestuous, but ultimately sweet, interior. Jeanne Paulsen is excellent as the mother, equal parts sighs, wheedles, and desperate yearnings to be let into her daughter's confidence.

The play happens in real time and is literally a kitchen-sink drama. It is also a competition—Maggie shoves her blueberry pie in the oven, sets the timer, and dares her daughter to get the essay finished before the pie.

Never Swim Alone is about love and competition between two men and is more stylistically and thematically interesting. (Reasonable question: Is that just because I'm a dude? Honest answer: No.) The set, by Rodney Cuellar, evokes a game show, which is exactly what the play demands—a forum for the two men (Lathrop Walker and Michael Place), childhood best friends turned adult archrivals, to figure out who is alpha and who is beta. As the referee (Mikano Fukaya) keeps reminding us, one of the twain is the better man and one of them has a gun in his briefcase—we, and she, know this can come to no good. But she seems to take a nihilistic joy in the proceedings, not least because something sinister happened to her on a beach years ago. Something involving these two gladiators.

The play is broken into thirteen rounds with names like "Friendly Advice," "Power Lunch," and "Who Falls Dead the Best," with lit, abstract scoreboards above each man's corner. Their showdown feels Japanese, not just because the referee is played by Fukaya (who begins each round with a sharp hajime!), nor because of its deadly serious game-show vibe, nor because the contenders have the physical and mental intensity of sumo wrestlers, but because the men embody that peculiar competitive holism introduced to international corporate culture by Japan—marrying financial success, style, athleticism, and manliness into one salaryman-as-warrior persona. One of them is better at business. The other has a happier family. They both adore their own mothers and deride each other's fathers. Each is frustrated by his shortcomings and resentful of the other's successes. And one of them has a gun.

Once again, the Washington Ensemble Theatre shows its knack for picking the right plays—smart, current, and well suited to its budget and actors. The script, by Daniel MacIvor, is excellent, and what it doesn't need in production values, it greedily demands of its performers. The men jest, bullshit, fight, and make lightning changes between vicious and friendly. And they move, from exuberant swimming, shooting, and horsing around to the circumscribed (and clichéd) gestures of men talking business—the one hand pocketed, the other held up in mock empathy. "I know how things are with you, and there's a chance that there might be a place opening up in accounting," says the first man. "Frank, I really like that tie," parries the second. "I'm offering you a break here, Bill," says the first. "That's not Donna's taste," counterpunches the second, hinting at a mistress. "Very flashy. Very tasteful." That round is called "Business Ties." The second man wins.

Director Roger Benington returns after his work on WET's Crave. And, directorially, Never Swim Alone rhymes robustly with his last work with the company. There is the bettering of the script with smart flourishes. (For example, the script calls for the referee to begin the play onstage under a sheet; this production has her secreted away in a punching bag.) There is the physicality and careful textual timing, hallmarks of WET's general ensemble style, which Benington knows how to exploit. The men talk over each other or alternate lines in a vicious duet, and the effect is tense and frightening.

It's temping to think of the fight between these two in metaphor: The Civil War, say, when the loser had more gumption and the winner had more money. Or businessman versus family man. But good guy/bad guy interpretations miss the point—both want everything perfect, everything now, and are ashamed of any dusty corners in their respective houses. Of course, there is one corner, occupied by the referee, that they have been studiously avoiding for decades. And in that time, both have become tortured—and dangerous—men.

brendan@thestranger.com