The three grownup sisters in Shelagh Stephenson’s Olivier award-winning comedy have one thing in common. Forced together by the death of their mother, they each have a child’s neediness. They are divided, however, over what – or whom – it is they need.
What Teresa, the eldest, needs is respect for her devotion, especially as the primary carer in their mother’s final days of dementia. Played by Victoria Brazier, austere and brittle, she is trapped in a narrative of martyrdom, a woman forever convinced she is second-best and overlooked.
As the baby of the family, 33-year-old Catherine is in permanent need of coddling. Played by Helen Flanagan, babbling and self-absorbed, she is hungry for reassurance – about her looks, her health and her desirability.
Then in the middle, and at the play’s centre, 39-year-old Mary needs to be understood. Played by Polly Lister, wise and yet vulnerable, she is the clever high-flyer, the one who became a doctor, receiving admiration, yearning for love.
These unrequited desires are focused on the same woman and Stephenson has the good sense to bring her back to life. Played by Vicky Binns, Vi haunts the family home with needs of her own, not least the need to be valued by her daughters. In a play about memory, she has quite a different account of the past from their self-justifying childhood tales.
Like the patient in Mary’s care, a young man rebuilding his history after suffering post-traumatic amnesia, the daughters have constructed their memories in a way that suits them. The play is not sentimental about Vi’s death – it is too blackly funny for that – but it does show that, in her absence, with none of the old grievances to fall back on, the sisters must now endure the pain of redefining themselves.
These themes keep The Memory of Water from sinking into sitcom blandness, a bulwark to resist the pull of low-stakes character comedy. But even if the play is more cosy than explosive, lacking a big dramatic moment around which the ideas could coalesce, in Lotte Wakeham’s well-acted production, a collaboration with the Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse, the to and fro of emotions has a reflective, bittersweet appeal.
• At Octagon, Bolton, until 21 February; then Everyman, Liverpool, 25 February to 14 March
