The Memory of Water

Thu, 9 July 2009, 08:27 am

‘The Memory of Water’ is a play written, in 1996, by Northumbrian writer and actor Shelagh Stephenson. This black comedy was winner of an Olivier Award in 2000, and UK Play of the Year in 2001. It is showing nightly at 7.30 at The Playhouse, 3 Pier Street in Perth, until 19^th July.

          It is 1995 in a small village near Whitby, and three sisters have gathered at their mother’s home on the eve of her funeral. Mary (Rebecca Davis), a doctor of psychiatry, after a long journey is sleeping in her mother’s bed. She is awoken by Teresa (Michelle Fornasier), a frumpy hypochondriac who is devastated by her mother’s passing. Teresa has the funeral planned to the smallest detail. The two sisters start to discuss their childhood, and one wonders if they were actually present at some events, or if indeed they took place.
          When outspoken, tactless, hippy Catherine (Melinda Dransfield) arrives, she relates her mainly imagined suffering as a child, and how her life has become such a mess as a result. Childhood battle lines are recreated and defences erected. The girls demonstrate that it is not what is remembered, but rather how it has been stored in the mind.
          Mary has quite a long chat with an elderly relative (Julia Moody) who seems to remember the children’s childhood in a completely different light. When Mary’s selfish lover, married doctor Mike (Geoff Kelso), arrives in a blizzard, his presence is accepted by the family with differing attitudes.
          Teresa's husband, Frank (Stuart Halusz), has suffered from Teresa’s neurotic outlook on life for decades, and wants to escape to a better life.

The play makes use of the metaphor of homeopathy, where an essential ingredient is watered down to a ‘drop in the ocean’ and yet is still thought to possess the ‘magic action’. Here it is compared to the generations of gene mixing, and how tiny mannerisms and attitudes can persist.

The set (designer Steve Nolan) is outstanding, with an amazing amount of attention to detail – even the dome clock in the passageway was working! It was truly an old lady’s bedroom. The lighting (Joseph Mercurio) was generally simple, but had a couple of good mood effects. Sound designer, Ash Gibson Greig introduced a hospital respirator sound each time the aura of the departed mother was around.

Roger Hodgman, former Artistic Director of Melbourne Theatre Company, kept the action moving along on this superbly constructed, but difficult to execute, play. A tale which is a blend of tragedy and fond memories. Julie Walters was one of the first actors to appear in this play, and this cast adopted her accent fairly convincingly, however I felt at times that the concentration on the accent distracted the actors from their parts. With the entire cast having very different characters, it was essential that a rapport was built up between the siblings, so may I suggest do not worry about the accent as long as the interaction melds.
Good strong cast, but particular praise for Stuart Halusz and Michelle Fornasier as the neurotic couple, and Melinda Dransfield as the tasteless runt of the family.

I much preferred the dramatic sections to the comedy, but the whole play was satisfying and great fun, which will be particularly appreciated by audience members who come from a large family.

The Memory of Water

Mon, 13 July 2009, 11:26 am

Walter Plinge

It's very interesting to read the comments above. To continue the discussion about the accents I thought I would add the following. The accents in this production were chosen and developed by the director with very specific goals in mind - the mother with a broader Yorkshire accent indicative of her generation, the sister who stayed in Yorkshire with a similar, yet softer accent, the youngest sister who has travelled abroad and has a more cosmopolitan and influenced accent, and the sister who studied and became a doctor and who moved away from Yorkshire and spent most of her life in the South East of England. She has an accent that retains most northern vowels, but is overlaid with a couple of important vowel sounds influenced by living in the south east and moving in middle class professional circles. This was approached by particularly changing the diphthong vowel as in the word “home”, which, in the middle class London accent, phonetically contains the sound o ( as in “hot”) + the neutral vowel. It is the most commonly changed sound, and was chosen by the accent coach and director with the intention of removing Mary from her childhood and past - a major part of her character, as becomes clear in the second act. People's accents change over a lifetime, often even within a short period and depending on which part of the world they are living in. It is very common for people to actively lose an accent, or, in this case, some elements of an accent, for social and societal reasons, particularly in the UK. Mary's accent was copied directly from a recording of a native Yorkshire speaker who had been living in London. It is interesting that the complexity of accents reflecting class differences within a family can prove challenging to present onstage. I am English originally, and I know how varied the vowel sounds are within my own family circle, even though all the members live in the same area. The differences have arisen from different generational education and job opportunities. I would be interested to know if anyone else has worked on plays that seem to require such minute variations.

Thread (9 posts)

Threaded Flat

The Memory of Water— Gordon the Optom9 July 2009

Feedback to Gordon— chocoholic9 July 2009
reviewing— Gordon the Optom9 July 2009
The Accents— Walter Plinge9 July 2009
- Memory of Water Accents— Walter Plinge17 July 2009
THE MEMORY OF WATER— PHILLIP MACKENZIE13 July 2009
The Memory of Water— Walter Plinge13 July 2009
- Thanks for letting us know— Walter Plinge14 July 2009
MEMORY OF WATER— PHILLIP MACKENZIE14 July 2009

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