Theatre Review - The Memory of Water
SHELAGH Stephenson’s Olivier award-winning play is given a welcome revival at Hampstead, directed by Alice Hamilton. Set in the midst of a freezing Yorkshire winter, three sisters meet in the parental home for the funeral of their mother, Vi (Lizzy McInnerny). Teresa (Lucy Black) is the most organised of the siblings, bossy and quick to act the martyr; Mary (Laura Rogers) is the high achiever, a neurologist in love with a married man; and Catharine (Carolina Main) is the vulnerable youngest, forever on the brink of a meltdown, who complains she is never listened to. When things began to take a familiar turn, I realised that I had actually seen the play’s premiere in 1996. Such is the unreliability of memory – a subject Stephenson explores in various ways. Vi’s last years had been blighted by Alzheimer’s. Mary is obsessed by a patient’s post-traumatic amnesia. When discussing homeopathy, her boyfriend refers to a study about the memory of water: “You can remove every last trace of the c