Writer: Shelagh Stephenson
Director: Alice Hamilton
Shelagh Stephenson’s 1996 play starts well as three sisters gather in their family home for their mother’s funeral. The three women find that they all have different recollections of their childhood, but this promising examination of memory, and the tricks that it plays, disintegrates into farce in an overlong second half.
Any play about three sisters will have Chekhovian undertones, and Teresa seems the most likely character to come from a dacha, berating her sisters for leaving her to care for their mother and, then, to organise the funeral. With her partner Frank, she sells herbal supplements for a living. Frank believes their remedies are ‘utter crap’.
Catherine is the youngest sister, in love with a Spanish man who won’t return her phone calls. She’s a live wire, constantly stoned and paranoid. Her opposite is Mary, a doctor, outwardly successful and confident, although her relationship with a married man who won’t leave his wife, makes her finally a tragic figure underneath her cool exterior.
While the three of them bicker incessantly, Stephenson’s interest in memory slowly becomes apparent. Their mother had Alzheimer’s, her mind breaking off like an archipelago. Mary has a patient with post-traumatic amnesia. When presented with a bike, the patient knows how to ride it, but he can’t remember what to call it. Catherine has absorbed her sisters’ memories and claims that what happened to them happened to her. They all have different memories of how the cat died, though Teresa gleefully insists it was killed by a combine harvester.
However, it seems that Stephenson has used up all her themes in the first half, and the second half, neurotic and farcical in equal measure, is reminiscent of a minor Alan Ayckbourn. There’s even some slapstick with a coffin. Memory truly is forgotten.
The story may disappoint but the acting, as you would expect from Hampstead Theatre, is top notch especially Laura Rogers who plays Mary with just the right amount of brittleness and Adam James, currently to be seen in BBC’s Vigil, who seems very natural as Mike, Mary’s married boyfriend. The other cast members put in good work, though their characters sail very close to caricature in the second half as secrets are spilled – aren’t they always in these kinds of plays? – and decisions are made.
Anna Reid’s functional bedroom design would suggest that its old resident, the sisters’ mother, lived in a hotel, as there are no signs of her anywhere except when the wardrobes are opened revealing rails of dresses. Lizzy McInnerny’s portrayal of the mother, stubborn and affected, would suggest that there would be traces of her left in the room. Reid’s set holds no memories unlike water, which apparently remembers everything that once ran through it. The Memory of Water may not be forgettable, but nor is it a show to remember.
Runs until 16 October 2021
The Reviews Hub Score
Tepid
