Theater Review—

The Brilliance Of ‘Water’ Grows On You, Thanks To Ridgefield’s Talented Cast & Director

By Julie Stern

RIDGEFIELD — Leo Tolstoy pointed out that while happy families are all alike, the members of unhappy families are each unhappy in their own particular way. In his realistic dramas of decaying country gentry, Anton Chekhov could be very funny, even as he portrayed heartbreaking personal failure.

The Memory of Water, by the contemporary English playwright Shelagh Stephenson, which opened at Ridgefield Theater Barn last weekend, is billed as a comedy, but audiences should not expect either the sitcom dynamics of Neil Simon, nor the slapstick, door-slamming complications of traditional farce.

This study of the reunion of three sisters, who come together in their old family home to plan their mother’s funeral and dispose of her possessions, is more reminiscent of those 19th Century Russians, or perhaps the late Wendy Wasserstein. However droll and fast paced the sarcastic remarks, the underlying sadness and ambivalence are never far from the surface.

The title comes from a speculative discussion in which one of the sisters suggests that water somehow contains a kind of molecular memory of everything that enters it — like a magnetic video tape, recording with unfailing accuracy the way things really were. This is in contrast to the sisters’ flawed and differing accounts of pivotal events in their childhood, which have shaped their adult lives and left them each emotionally damaged.

Director-Producer Sherry Asch has gotten spectacular performances from every member of the cast to the point where it is easy to forget you are watching actors on a stage, but rather feel drawn into the lives of real people being forced to accept self knowledge that they would rather not face.

Central to the play is Paulette Layton, as oldest sister Mary. Bookish and studious as a child, Mary is the most independent and apparently successful of the trio. At 39 she is a physician, specializing in neurological science (in particular the study of memory), and involved in a long term affair with Mike, a charming and well-meaning fellow who can’t leave his invalid wife.

Sherry Cox is the middle sister, Teresa, a compulsively anxious organizer who runs a homeopathic drug business with her second husband, Frank, a man she met through the personal ads of a magazine, and who she controls to the point where he is chronically tired.

Valerie Rich is the self-indulgent, narcissistic baby of the family, Catherine. A chronic liar and drug abuser, her frantic pursuit of men (“I don’t have any problem with men. I’ve slept with 78 of them”) does not manage to stanch her underlying panic and loneliness.

In the course of 24 hours, set in their mother’s bedroom with a violent snowstorm raging outside, the sisters rehash old resentments and conflicts as they sort through her clothes and finalize the burial arrangements.

Laurel Lettieri makes periodic appearances as the ghost of the girls’ mother, Violet. The personification of memory, and visible only to Mary, Violet reflects various points in time, from her early days as a high living party girl, to her abandonment by her emotionally distant husband, and continuing to the confusion of the Alzheimer’s dementia that marked her final days.

Even as the sisters seem so different from one another, these glimpses of Violet reveal just how much each one of them has inherited some facet of her character.

Under the influence of the occasion, as well as copious amounts of booze and weed, the eccentric behaviors of the sisters, which are played for comic effect at the outset, segue into emotional breakdown and painful confrontations with truth. As the men looking on from the outside of the family circle, Dana Laite as Mike and Brian De Toma as Frank make the most of their roles. Torn between their resolve to be responsible and honorable, versus the need to assert their own personal wants, they struggle to cope with the burdens of their attachment to Mary and Theresa, just as they labor to lift the actual coffin when the hired pall bearers are delayed by the storm.

This is a long play, and at the beginning it seems difficult to see where it is going, but it grows on you persuasively as realities unfold and the profundities of its depths are revealed. Since its initial premiere in 1996, The Memory of Water has won prizes and been staged successfully all across Europe and North America. I think the Theater Barn production is as good as it gets, and definitely worth a trip to Ridgefield.

(Performances continue weekends until June 26. See the Enjoy Calendar for ticket and curtain details.)