Casey Jay Andrews has thought a lot about shooting stars. The British playwright used to not know if she’d ever seen one, but she also assumed this wasn’t uncommon—certainly the celestial occurrence couldn’t be commonplace. But if there’s one thing she’s learned from putting on productions of her show Oh My Heart, Oh My Home, it’s that a lot of people actually have seen a shooting star.

Now, she introduces the audience to her solo-ish play with a bit of housekeeping: Though the story explains how to view a meteor shower, she’s clearly not an expert, she says with flourish. Still, the magic of shooting stars—created when a meteor collides with the earth’s atmosphere—is at the center of her story.

“Meteors tell stories of our existence,” Andrews, as the narrator of Oh My Heart, Oh My Home, intones midway through the production now playing at Studio Theatre. “I would just see a rock.”

The hourlong play takes place on a small but comfortable set. Rugs are thrown about and a mismatch of furniture—a side table, a media console, and one ornately decorated lamp hanging from the ceiling—makes the space inviting. Mixers, a microphone, and other music-making paraphernalia cover the media console, behind which sits musician and Oh My Heart’s co-composer Jack Brett. The focal point, however, is the dollhouse at center stage.

A beautiful bit of craftsmanship that’s slowly unveiled over the course of the show, the house is a central character in Andrews’ play. Memories, she says, “are held somewhere in the rattle of the pipes.” Metaphorically, the house is a vessel for a family’s history; as a prop, it’s also a backdrop for projections (designed by Andrews and Rachel Sampley) of old home movies, news clips, and, of course, shooting stars. 

Andrews narrates the story of Freddy, a city dweller traveling to her family home for the weekend. Sometimes embodied by Andrews, Freddy plans to spend her 33rd birthday with the house’s sole inhabitant, her grandfather, watching a rare meteor shower from the rooftop of the home he’s lived in for 40 years. 

What unfurls is a beautiful tale of family, loss, and a sense of place. Intermixing variations of electronic music (co-composed by George Jennings), Brett’s emotional singing, and bits of poetry, Andrews shares Freddy’s growing sense of isolation and dissatisfaction with her daily life—wondering “how you can let life get smaller.” The other part of the story belongs to Freddy’s grandfather, a novice astronomer and widower, practiced in “the delicate balance between holding on and letting go.”

That simple but deeply understandable line haunts the audience and the family throughout the show. A captivating examination of loss, Oh My Heart, Oh My Home, as the name suggests, is very much interested in the space “home” takes up in our hearts. Andrews is equally concerned with the importance of place—specifically, how places like a home inform our sense of self. 

For Freddy, the memories of growing up with three generations under one roof remind her of a time when life wasn’t small. In that way, the house is a balm for Freddy’s loneliness. It acts like the starting point on a map—a constellation, if you will—connecting the small moments that laid the groundwork of her identity. A literal constellation, made from stickers to represent the glow-in-the-dark stars so many of us decorated our bedrooms with as children, covers her dollhouse bedroom. In a bit of awe for the audience, they literally light up the tiny room.

For her grandfather, the house is a physical connection between himself and his wife. It’s the keeper of the 40 years of history they shared, as well as a stabilizing reminder of the 13 years he spent learning to live without her. What then, Oh My Heart, Oh My Home asks, happens if we lose such a formative piece of ourselves? 

There are other questions, too: What would you do to save that place? And how do you begin to move forward without it? “The thing that is hurting her is that he couldn’t say,” Andrews narrates.

Loss is sprinkled throughout the tale—Freddy’s loss of self, the loss of family as they move, the death of a matriarch, loss of electricity, Freddy literally losing her grandfather—but the most poignant loss is the one her grandfather suffers as he tries not to lose his house, and with it his wife all over again. Andrews imbues her show with such a powerful sense of heartbreak it feels as if the loss is yours. 

Her grandfather’s fear juxtaposed with Freddy’s ennui speaks to a generation of millennials. Most of us will never live in the same house for 40 years, and it’s something of wonder to believe anyone ever did. In struggling to find a sense of place in a world that’s changed greatly between the previous generation and the next, we’ve romanticized what was. Over the course of this gorgeously told and visually stunning story, it’s impossible not to wonder if the realities of modern life have eroded our sense of belonging to a place. Or if perhaps we’re just seeing rocks when we should be seeing meteors. 

Oh My Heart, Oh My Home, written, designed, and performed by Casey Jay Andrews, composed by George Jennings and Jack Brett, and directed by Dominic Allen and Steve McCourt, runs through Sept. 22 at Studio Theatre, with very limited seating. 2024 Fall Arts Guide Rating: 4.5 out of 5. studiotheatre.org. $50–$62.50.