The Memory of Water

The action of ‘The Memory of Water’ revolves around a funeral, at which the chief mourners are three sisters with little in common except that they all still live with the legacies of their childhood with the mother they've come to bury. Teresa (played by Maureen Coleman), an obsessive over-organiser, is seemingly content with her health food business and her second husband, Frank (Joe Clutterbuck). Mary (Tessa King) is a vaguely discontented successful doctor with an equally successful lover Mike (John Atkinson), who is, alas, married. Catherine (Donna Priddle) is the youngest and most immature, who binges on shopping for inappropriate clothes, go-nowhere love affairs, and drugs. There's also the about to be buried mum Vi (Stephanie Baumgarten), whose ghostly presence is visible and audible only to Mary. What IS the ‘memory of water’? This intriguing title is derived from a scientific observation that water may have a form of memory in that when a curative element is added to it and then removed, the water retains curative properties despite there being no trace of the drug itself. The story explores how the dead woman has touched the lives of each of her children, and memory is central to the ways the children come to terms with her death. The sisters share a number of memories from their common childhood, some happy and some not so happy, but each quickly discovers that the others do not share the memory at all, or else remember events in a totally different light. Part ghost story, part tragedy, definitely comedy, ‘The Memory of Water’ is well worth seeing. The 3-week season opens on Friday 7th July and continues until Saturday 22nd July.