The Memory of Water

An Octagon Theatre Bolton and Liverpool & Everyman Playhouse co-production By Shelagh Stephenson
Directed by Lotte Wakeham –

About The Memory of Water

THREE SISTERS AND A FUNERAL...

Winter, 1996.  The Spice Girls are riding high in the charts, football has failed to come home, and Dolly the Sheep's been cloned. Meanwhile, on the eve of their mum’s funeral, Mary, Teresa and Catherine return to their Northern childhood home for the first time in years. As they sort through clothes, keepsakes and ghosts of the past, the whisky flows, resentments surface, and long-held silences crack open with unexpected laughter.

Hilarious yet deeply moving, this is a major 30th anniversary revival of Shelagh Stephenson’s The Memory of Water, which won the Olivier Award for Best Comedy. A play about families, grief, and the unreliable narratives we inherit. A powerful exploration of how we remember and how much we choose to forget.

Cast

  • Vicky Binns

    Vi

  • Victoria Brazier

    Teresa

  • Reginald Edwards

    Frank

  • Helen Flanagan

    Catherine

  • Polly Lister

    Mary

  • Charlie De Melo

    Mike

  • Leah Marks

    Understudy

  • Charlie Ryan

    Understudy

Credits

  • Shelagh Stephenson (She/Her)

    Writer

    Plays for the stage include:The Memory of Water (1996) which premiered at Hampstead Theatre and transferred to the West End, winning the Olivier Award for ‘Best New Comedy’ in 2000; An Experiment With An Air Pump (1997) which won the Peggy Ramsay Award and was produced at the Royal Exchange, Manchester and Hampstead Theatre; Five Kinds Of Silence (The Lyric, Hammersmith, 2000); Ancient Lights (Hampstead Theatre, 2000); Mappa Mundi (National Theatre, 2002) and Enlightenment  (Abbey Theatre, Dublin, 2005 and Hampstead Theatre, 2010). 

  • Lotte Wakeham

    Lotte Wakeham (She/Her)

    Director

    Lotte Wakeham is Artistic Director at the Octagon Theatre, Bolton.  

  • Katie Scott

    Set & Costume Designer

  • Andy Graham

    Sound Designer

  • Laura Howard

    Lighting Designer

  • Jonnie Riordan

    Movement & Intimacy Director

  • Anita Gilbert

    Vocal Coach

  • Dominique Reid

    Assistant Director

    Dominique Reid is the current Resident Assistant Director at the Octagon Theatre Bolton. He is also the recipient of the Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation Scholarship and is now in the second half of his Directing MFA at Birkbeck University. He is honoured to be working on one of Dickens’ seminal works. 

    Previous credits include: Young Associate at the Lyric Hammersmith Theatre, Disney Theatrical Artist at Disney Theatrical Group, Resident Director on the MA Acting course at ArtsEd Drama School. 

    He is currently working towards the next R&D for his one-woman play, Possum

  • Will Treasure

    Producer

  • Tabitha Rose Hughes

    Assistant Producer

Related items

  1. Romeo & Juliet

    –
    More info

  2. Octagon join Talkin’ Tables initiative - bringing people of Bolton together

    25 July 2024

  3. The Trials

    –
    More info