"The Memory of Water" mixes equal parts comedy and heartbreak, the perfect recipe for a
hysteria cocktail.
The play is technically a comedy because the deaths take place before the lights go up. All that dies
here are a few secrets, illusions, a bit of hope and a grudge or two. The audience at times may feel as
if they will die laughing, other times they’ll be choked up.
"The Memory of Water," directed by Lesa Lockford, opens a two-weekend run tonight at 8 in the
Eva Marie Saint Theatre at BGSU.
Shelagh Stephenson sets her play on the Yorkshire coast of England. Vi (Cynthia Stroud) has just died and
her three daughters have returned home for the funeral and, while they’re at it, revive long-standing
resentments.
"We don’t argue, we bicker," Mary (Janina Bradshaw) corrects her older sister Teresa (Allison
Kump).
A fine point, but these sisters have a way of hitting a fine point and gouging it open into a gapping
emotional hole.
There’s nothing subtle though about the youngest Catherine (Madison Zavitz) who bursts in all in a
tither, and loaded down with her pre-funeral shopping bags, and a nagging pain in her nether regions
that requires alcohol, marijuana and other drugs to treat – remedies her sisters all share in copious
amounts.
Set in the mother’s bedroom and staged in the cozy Eva Marie Saint, all this unravels within arm’s reach
of the audience. We see their faces up close as they contemplate themselves in the mirror. We worry that
Catherine will trample on our feet as she totters around in silver platform shoes, and duck when she
hurls a small box across the room.
The cast manages English accents, without calling attention to them, but then there’s plenty to distract
us.
Each sister has a complementary love life. The dutiful, stolid Teresa is married to Frank (David Baker),
who is said to be strikingly like the sisters’ father. Baker does a fine job of coloring in the
outlines, of what could be a drab character, making the most of his dry wit.
Mary’s beau is a married-with-children celebrity doctor Mike (Patrick Scholl), who is handsome and famous
and knows it. He seems a perfect fit for a woman at once a successful doctor and yet insecure about her
place on earth.
Catherine has an off-stage Spanish lover, the latest of the 78 men she’s bedded. I counted, she
announces.
And though this is her funeral, the deceased continues to haunt Mary, at first as her younger self and
then as her aged self. In this last appearance she reflects touchingly on what it feels to have
dementia. It’s like having holes in your brain, she said. When you say "I," you don’t know
what that means.
This is fitting given the sisters experience a kind of collective dementia, never remembering the same
incident the same way. What child did get left at the beach? And why?
Bradshaw, Kump and Zavitz create a believable chemistry. Though each sister has a distinctive
personality, they are believable as women who grew up together, even if they disagree on the details.
Mary is at the center as the most successful, and the one with the biggest secret. Zavitz makes clear
her character’s frenetic behavior is driven by desperation. Kump is marvelous in her drunk scene,
staggering comically while steadily driving toward the great dramatic revelation.
Not that anyone arrives at a resolution. A fine ambiguity as to the sisters’ fates hangs in the air as
the characters trip off stage. As they exit and the bedroom window blows open and snow drifts in, the
audience is sure to be left with a warm feeling for those with whom they’ve just spent the last two
hours.