It’s a pleasure to see four northern actresses – Victoria Brazier, Polly Lister, Helen Flanagan and Vicky Binns – playing lead roles in this dark, funny comedy at Bolton Octagon. 

The Memory of Water, written by Shelagh Stephenson, is a difficult play to get right. Three daughters, Teresa, Mary and Catherine, gather at their childhood home for their mother’s funeral. They are three very different women. Teresa, the eldest, who runs a health food business with her husband Frank, is a bit dowdy and anxious and trying to be in charge. Mary, the middle child, is a successful doctor and also anxious, but only because she awaits the arrival of her lover, Mike, a married man with three kids. Meanwhile, Catherine, the youngest by some years, is desperate for attention, from anyone.

The play takes place in their late mother’s bedroom over the course of two days and encompasses all the stuff that siblings have about the varying experiences of their upbringing and the consequences for their lives now, and it comes out ruthlessly. It is further complicated by the arrival of Mike and Frank who have their own views. Lurking throughout is the ghost of their mother, Vi, a glamorous woman who liked men a lot and her kids not so much.

If this sounds dark, it is, but downbeat it is not. The play won the Olivier Award for Best New Comedy in 2000 and, on this showing, rightly so. It is utterly hilarious. Brazier’s turn as the conservative Teresa, pissed out of her brains and letting it all hang out, is worth the ticket price alone. Lister as Mary has a terrific line in the sharp riposte, as befits a character who has moved beyond her roots to greater things, and Catherine’s lack of self-awareness is given awe-inspiring form by Flanagan (an actress we are more used to seeing on the telly) in her first straight play. And Binns as Vi in her strapless and tight green satin dress is the embodiment of louche.

But this production not just funny – it’s also moving and thought-provoking. It is impossible not to feel empathy for each of the characters. In short, The Memory of Water is that rare thing, a great night out. 

By Chris Wallis, Theatre Editor

Main image credit: Pamela Raith

 

The Memory of Water is at Bolton Octagon until February 21, 2026. For more information, click here.