The Memory of Water by

Shelagh Stephenson

12th  - 15th November 2008, Sheffield University Drama Studio

 

 

PICTURE GALLERY

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FROM THE PROGRAMME

 

The Play

The Memory of Water (1997) played in the Manhattan Theatre Club in New York then toured the south of England before entering the West End. In 2000 it won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Comedy and in 2002 was adapted for film as Before You Go , with Julie Walters.

Three sisters come home to attend their mother’s funeral. Teresa seems content with her second marriage to Frank and their health food business. Mary is a successful doctor, as is her TV celebrity lover, Mike. He is also, alas, married. Catherine the youngest, is a butterfly flitting between men and shopping; drifting on a cloud of drugs and alcohol.

Their mother Vi is ever present as a memory. She is seen only by Mary though her influence is felt by all of them. The sisters are haunted by her memory. She is ever present in their lives; but will she always exert a powerful influence? Following her example they all fail to successfully navigate the troubling waters of romantic and familial relationships. Nevertheless both laughter and tears are guests at this funeral. The deeply felt love of the sisters for each other makes this a comedy and not a tragedy.                        

 

The Author

Shelagh Stephenson was born in Northumberland and read drama at Manchester University. Initially she wrote radio plays for the BBC (Radio) – Darling Peidi, and The Anatomical Venus. In 1997 she wrote Five Kinds of Silence which won the Writer’s Guild Award for the Best Original Radio Play. In 1998 she followed this with An Experiment with an Air Pump which was joint winner of the Peggy Ramsay Award and premiered at the Manchester Royal Exchange Theatre. Other works include Ancient Lights (2000), and Mappa Mundi (2002). In 2004 she wrote Life is a Dream and in 2005 Enlightenment, which won the Sloan Commission Award in New York.  Nemesis was broadcast in 2005. She is currently completing another play for radio and will shortly begin work on a major television project.

 

The Title

The Memory of Water is a generally discredited scientific proposition that a substance which has been dissolved in water continues to have an effect - even after the solution has been diluted so much that there is very little chance of even one molecule of the substance remaining. (Just as Vi continues to have an effect on her offspring even when she is no longer present).

The idea arose from experiments by Jacques Benveniste, initially in 1988, and was seized upon by proponents of homeopathy since it appeared to support their cause. However more rigorous attempts to repeat the tests, supervised by the journal Nature, failed to reproduce  the effect. Several further independent attempts have also failed to find the effect, though one did claim to have done so. Experiments in 1997 and 1999 even claimed to have found that the effect could be transmitted over telephone lines and the internet!

Independent research in 2005 looking at the physical structure of water molecules showed that in fact they only appear to retain a physical ‘memory’ of shape for about 0.000000000000025 seconds.

 

 

Midland Players Amateur Dramatic Society, Sheffield, UK

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THE FLYER