The Memory of Water

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Playwright Shelagh Stephenson's first stage play, staged at Hampstead Theatre in 1996. The play won Best Comedy at the Laurence Olivier Awards. It was filmed as Before You Go in 2002.

Three sisters come together before their mother's funeral, each haunted by their own demons. The three each have different memories of the same events, causing constant bickering about whose memories are true. Teresa is an unhappy housewife, who runs a health food supplement store with her husband Frank, and who feels she has had to keep the family together for years. Mary is a doctor whose five-year affair with Mike, a married doctor, is starting to show strain. She is also rather obsessed with nursing a young boy suffering from amnesia, and is troubled by visions of her dead mother. The youngest daughter Catherine is permanently trying to catch her sister's attention and feels she was always left out, even in childhood. As the three women get together after years of separation, all their hidden lies and self-betrayals are about to reach the surface…