Comic tale will live long in the memory

THE Memory of Water . . . cast members (front, from left) Maeve Larkin, Catherine Kinsella, Eva Pope, Paul Barnhill, Tim Treslove and (back) Emma Gregory

THE MEMORY OF WATER, Oldham Coliseum

ON the face of it, a play about three sisters, home to sort through their late mother’s belongings prior to her funeral, shouldn’t offer a lot of scope for laughter.

But that ignores the remarkable talent of playwright Shelagh Stephenson to bring hilarity — and just a little tragedy — out of everything from cannabis-induced confession to drunken annoyance and family secrets.

Stephenson has an uncanny ability to make the apparently mundane extraordinary — no wonder it won her the Olivier award for best comedy back in 2000.

And the play gets the sort of treatment it fully deserves in Kevin Shaw’s excellent production, graced by four terrific, note-perfect performances from the central women — the three sisters and the vision of their mother — and equally enjoyable support from the two men.

The title comes from homoeopathy’s central premise that even diluted hundreds of times, an active ingredient in water is still retained in the water’s “memory”.

It applies here to the idea that elements of behaviour are passed down from parent to child, even though the child may on the surface seem nothing like the parent.

In a freezing winter, eldest and most-sorry-for-herelf Teresa (Eva Pope), doctor Mary (Maeve Larkin) and exquisitely needy Catherine (Catherine Kinsella) have gathered with Teresa’s husband, stoic Frank (Tim Treslove), and Mary’s married lover, TV celebrity doctor Mike (Paul Barnhill). The three have never quite got on, but close proximity and the emotional occasion push feelings to the fore; opinions are aired and secrets revealed — with the help of a bottle of whisky and a shared joint.

It might sound the stage equivalent of a “chick-flick”, but it isn’t: Stephenson builds wonderful scenes out of nothing: the cannabis leads to a joyously silly dressing up game in mum’s old clothes, while the whisky has each of the sisters berating the others for their lack of concern and general lack of being there.

But all the while it is hilarious: what might have been overly oestrogen-fuelled drama becomes universal with caustic one-liners, comebacks and annoyances throughout. Each of the performers — including Emma Gregory, great as the late Vi — draws her or his character with great affection and the result is one of the best productions at the Coliseum for quite some time.

An unreserved recommendation.