The Memory of Water

By Shelagh Stephenson

Three sisters; Teresa, Mary and Catherine, come together before their mother's funeral, each haunted by their own demons. The play focuses on how each sister deals with the death and how it directly affects them. The three each have different memories of the same events, causing constant bickering about whose memories are true. As the three women get together after years of separation, all their hidden lies and self-betrayals are about to reach the surface. A theme of the play is, eponymously, memory. The sisters' memories interact with each other, and show that despite synchronicities of time and place they cannot agree upon one unifying experience. This is echoed in Vi's final speech, which portrays Alzheimer's disease as being adrift among a series of islands of your own identity. The sisters drift around their own islands of memory, unable to agree on one particular point, and yet are unified by their familial bond (Vi comments that "some things stay in your bones"). The play exhibits the unity of time, place and character present in a tragedy, as the play seems to take place at one time, in one space and without change in the characters' outlooks. However, because the comedy here is so often interspersed with the tragic it may be said to be a tragi-comedy.

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