WORDS DYLAN JOYCE-AHEARNE
We go to the theatre in the hope that what we see on stage will impress upon us. The actors will act and the audience will react. Unfortunately, sometimes the audience themselves impact. The problem with the performance of The Memory of Water by Shelagh Stephenson at the Civic Theatre in Tallaght was the audience.
In waiting for the crowd to stop laughing at the worn-out sexual innuendos, the actors had to hold their pauses and this broke their stride. The atmosphere became panto-like at times. It might seem remiss to raise the issue of the audience when critiquing a play, but the crowd’s reaction is a valid means of exploring a play. Just as the actors must deal with the audience on the night, so too does the crowd react to what they’re given. And in The Memory of Water the audience was confronted with some very base humour.
The play deals with three sisters who return home after the death of their mother. Together and individually, they grieve and examine their own lives in relation to both hers and each other’s. Her influence over them overcomes death as she haunts the middle daughter, Mary (Jenni Ledwell).
Another production could have played down much of the script’s basic humour to better effect. The writing, the crude comedic delivery of the two older sisters and the embarrassing willingness of the crowd to laugh at both, meant one dreaded the play’s “comedy”.
At one point Teresa (Julia Lane), asks her husband Frank (Michael Power) to “say something entertaining” to which he responds “For fuck’s sake, Teresa.” This received the biggest laugh of the night. Honestly then, with such base humour at play, the blame for my disappointment does not fall on the crowd. They uproariously took what was on offer and what was on offer was low brow.
The bigoted Violet was written to be worryingly pathetic. She was hateful and outdated and yet somewhat redeemed at the end. She haunts her daughter Mary, in the end destroying her and demanding humility. She then stoically shows mercy on her in a puritanical display of self-righteousness.
The theme of memory, given it was meant to be the basis of the play, could have been interacted with more. The play was a perfect example of the discord that arises when generational gaps aren’t well bridged on stage, something that the writer, cast (minus Emily Nagle) and audience were guilty of.
However, as the play progressed more sombre elements emerged that were well written and well acted across the board. The shining light of the production was Nagle who played Catherine, the youngest sister. Her delivery was the most dynamic part of the play. Though her lines were written by the same writer who wrote the hackneyed lines of the older siblings, Catherine’s dialogue always seemed fresh and original; a testimony to Nagle’s acting.
All three of the sisters (Lane, Ledwell and Nagle) performed well during the solemn parts. The problem did arise that, having pandered to the audience for cheap laughs in the first act, the crowd didn’t take the second act seriously; bizarrely, they insisted on accompanying the more serious, often tragic, scenes with a laughing track. This is, of course, a negative reflection of the playwright and not the audience.
