Water Memory Review – A very funny look at sisters fighting for the love of their dead mother | platform

TThe three adult sisters in Sheelagh Stevenson’s Olivier Award-winning comedy have something in common. After their mother’s death forces them to live together, they each struggle with the need of a child. But they are divided about what they need or who they need.

What Teresa, the eldest, needs is respect for her devotion, especially as the primary caregiver in her mother’s final days of dementia. Played by Victoria Brazier, tough and fragile, she is trapped in a story of martyrdom, a woman forever convinced that she is second best and ignored.

As the baby of the family, 33-year-old Catherine is in constant need of pampering. Played by Helen Flanagan, she is talkative and self-absorbed, hungry for reassurance – about her appearance, her health, her desirability.

Then in the middle of the play, in the middle of the play, 39-year-old Mary must be understood. Played by Polly Lister, she is wise but vulnerable, the intelligent pilot-turned-doctor who is admired and yearns for love.

These unrequited desires focus on the woman’s soul, and Stevenson has the good sense to bring them to life. Played by Vicky Binns, Vi fills the family home with her own needs, not least the need to be appreciated by her daughters. In a memory play, she has a very different account of the past than the self-justifying tales of her childhood.

Like the patient in Mary’s care, a young man reconstructing his history after developing post-traumatic amnesia, the girls constructed their memories in a way that suited them. The play isn’t sentimental about Vie’s death—she’s too funny for that—but it shows 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 “Water Memory” from sinking into sitcom chaos, a bulwark against the allure of low-stakes comedic characters. But even if the play is more relaxed than explosive, lacking a big dramatic moment around which ideas can coalesce, in Lottie Wickham’s well-acted production, in association with the Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse, the emotional back-and-forth has a reflective, bittersweet appeal.