The Memory of Water

Presented by - The Nonentities (A)

Location - Main House

Standard Ticket Prices

Curtain Up 7.30pm

Sisters meet on the eve of their mother’s funeral – a comedy? Yes! The acute and witty dialogue enlivens the plot as the family relive their childhood and adolescent rivalries. The comedy unravels as the strains and stresses of their past and present lives come to the surface. The Laurence Olivier award winning comedy for 2002 - witty, perceptive and penetrating.

Director's Note

How do you produce a play which has won the Lawrence Olivier award for Best Comedy, when the subject is the funeral of a Mother, and some of the scenes make you weep with the anguish they evoke?

Three sisters meet in the old family home of their childhood, to attend their Mother's funeral. As with many families today, each has followed a very different path through life, and would declare themselves happy with their choices. However, funerals are inevitably a time for looking back. Each has, over the years, acquired very different memories of their childhood, and it isn't long before sibling rivalries and resentment come to the surface, together with long hidden secrets.

It is very difficult to watch this play and not recognise events and people - perhaps even ourselves. Maybe that is the answer I was seeking, when we started out?

Shirley Gaston

Shelagh Stephenson

The author, Shelagh Stephenson , was born in Northumberland and read drama at Manchester University.

She has written five original plays for radio, one of which, Five Kinds of Silence, won the Writers' Guild Award for Best Original Radio Play of 1996 and the Sony Award for Best Original Drama.

The Memory of Water was her first stage play and opened at the Hampstead Theatre, before transferring to the West End, and the Olivier Award.