Hard to forget 'Memory' at Allens Lane Theater

by DAN BUSKIRK

The sweet sound of the Nat King Cole Trio's "You Call it Madness (But I Call it Love)" is the first thing we hear as the curtain rises at the Allens Lane Theater's nicely realized production of Shelagh Stephenson's comedic drama, The Memory of Water. It's a fitting theme: nothing can drive us crazier than our well-meaning family, a fact explored through this trio of unfulfilled British sisters returning home for the funeral of their overbearing mother.

The title of the play stems from a discussion between Mary, a doctor, and the sister at the center of the piece and her married doctor boyfriend. They remark on a study that shows that even when all traces of a homeopathic remedy has been removed from water, it still retains the power of the curative substance, as if the water maintained a memory. The ingredient now removed is the three women's mother, and yet her presence remains a guiding factor in each of their lives.

Not that her spirit has guided these women to happiness. With their parents' joyless marriage as a guide, each of the sisters finds herself apprehensively growing older within dysfunctional relationships.

Theresa is the oldest sister, who lived near their mother Vi, and tended to her as Vi's memory drifted away due to Alzheimer's. Theresa is in her second marriage with the exhausted Frank, and together they run a health food company. Catherine is the youngest, and she's a self-absorbed whirlwind, taking drugs and sleeping around and always ready to deposit her latest crisis at the center of the conversation.

But the heart of the play is the middle child, Mary, first seen lying in her dead mother's bed wearing sunglasses with a still potent bottle of whiskey on the floor. She's a successful neurologist who is still itching to confront her mother over some unfinished business. As the bottle is slowly drained, she will be given the chance to wrestle with her mother's still influential ghost.

The three lead actresses overcome the absence of any family resemblance by mastering the naturalistic dialogue's cadences with the easy ebb and flow siblings share. Loretta Zullo is stuck with the short stick; her character, Theresa, is the most emotionally stifled of the sisters and Stephenson has left her as the least fully-drawn of the trio, although her long, drunken soliloquy triggers many of the play's revelations. Frances Calter has the scene-stealing role of Catherine, the miserable pot-smoking shopaholic who felt unloved by her mother and carries that need with her. Calter's a joy to watch behave badly; she thinks nothing of throwing herself dramatically on the floor if she believes she's being ignored. This role could be merely milked for its laughs, but Calter is most impressive in the play's second act when the loneliness of her character rises to the fore.

I almost forgot Patricia Raine, if only because her character is deceased for the entire play. She contributes an air of regal power to Vi, demonstrating why she still has a hold on each of these sisters. The lanky Jeffrey Kitrosser captures the British manners of his character, Mike, with a nuance that is lacking in some of his fellow actors, and Eric J. Pederson summons the necessary deflated posture in his role as Frank, the beaten-down salesman husband of Theresa.

Both acts take place among the unearthed rubble in Vi's believably weathered middle-class bedroom. It's here that the girls break into an emotional exhaustion that ends with them crawling into their mother's clothes as they attempt to sort out her effect on them. But even though they can parse through their mother's flaws, The Memory of Water isn't convinced the trio can escape them. Even after your family passes away, you're still somehow stuck with them, for better or worse.

The theater is at Allens Lane and McCallum Street. Show times Friday and Saturdays at 8, Sundays at 6. Tickets, $15. Subscriptions, $60 for five plays. More info: www.allenslane.org or 215-248-0546.