Island Paradise

This year's Thanksgiving menu returns us to the realm of Caribbean cuisine, with some fanciful additions and alterations. The menu is below; a retrospective of menus past is here.

Underneath the Mistletoe

I’VE JUST HEARD an incredibly wonderful, enjoyable Christmas album, and if you’re as weary as I am of the shopping-mall treacle that annually assaults our ears, you’ll want to hear it, too. Be warned: it’s built around a dynamic big band playing new arrangements that hearken back to the classic decades of such bands. It’s the brainchild of guitarist Glenn Crytzer, a young virtuoso steeped in those traditions, and he ices the already lavish cake with original holiday numbers that are better than anything else that has tried to muscle into the repertory lately.

“Underneath the Mistletoe” is a 20-track collection placing those eleven originals alongside some unusual but brilliant choices of companion, all arranged by Crytzer for his 24-piece band. We get a good taste of what’s to come as a lively version of “Over the River and through the Wood” kicks off the disc, showcasing a tight five-man sax section, but it’s the second cut, Crytzer’s title song, that welcomes the eight-piece string section and gives the truest feel of the unique, swinging feel of the disc.

To say that it seems as if Gordon Jenkins just walked into the room is to pay Crytzer a high compliment. He really shows off his arranging skills here, with a deft integration of those strings (great pizzicato moment!) amidst the brass and reeds – and Hannah Gill puts over the witty lyrics with a sly smile and warmth in her voice.

Soul on Display

From the Theatrical Vault Dept.: Here’s one of the couple of dozen pieces I wrote for the the short-lived The Alt, a mis-managed magazine that struggled to become an alt-weekly, filling the void left by Metroland’s collapse. And it’s nice to re-visit the terrific theatrical experience that gave rise to this review.

                                                                                 

“THIS IS A TRIUMPH of post-modern meta-theater,” declares the character Kieron Barry, not to be confused with the playwright Kieron Barry although it’s understandable if you do. To which Danielle, his director (within the play, that is; not the director of the play), replies, “Are you sure it’s not just a fuck-and-tell?”

Jason Guy and Bonita Jackson

Under discussion are, or is, “The Official Adventures of Kieron and Jade,” the world premiere of which took place at Catskill’s Bridge Street Theatre, and which brings back to the area the work of a playwright previously acclaimed for “Tomorrow in the Battle.”

Love relationships were scrutinized in that dark, dramatic piece; here a dark, dramatic break-up becomes the stuff of comedy as Kieron Barry (the character) seeks meaning in the abrupt departure of Jade, his girlfriend of three years, a fate similarly suffered by the playwright.

It sounds confusing. It is. It has to be. There’s no keener crisis of rejection in one’s life, and I mean knife-edge keen. And there’s usually deception involved, as when Kieron self-destructively draws a blade across his forearm, producing stripes of blood – only to be admonished by Danielle that stage blood will emerge more easily if he moves the knife this way.

Master of Your Domain

From the Tech Vault Dept.: Here’s another outdated tech piece from my distant past, written for Metroland in 2000, and only fleetingly applicable to today’s internet requirements. Metroland’s website has since gone away, and it looks as if all those “cc” domains have also perished. But I still get a kick out of the time-travel aspect of this piece.

                                                                                          

A SERIES OF LOCAL ADS exhorts us to grab these new domain names so that we can enjoy the same kind of resale profit garnered by the folks who sold “business.com” for $7.5 million. “Dot-CC,” it is argued, will have the same impact as “dot-com,” now that there aren’t any appealing dot-com names left.

I haven’t rushed out to register anything; I’m afraid I missed the boat once and for all a few years ago, when in the course of writing an article about domain names I passed up lots of available goodies and merely got hold of banilsson.com. And nobody’s been beating a path to my door to buy it from me.

As opposed to Jimmy Guterman, who runs a Massachusetts-based consultancy called the Vineyard Group. He registered the name vineyard.com five years ago, “on a lark,” as he recently wrote in the Internet newsletter The Standard, “much as someone orders a vanity license plate.” A few is-it-for-sale queries straggled in during the ensuing years, but he noted that in 1999 the queries started pouring in weekly. He writes, “I know to ignore the ones with text in all upper case, as well as the ones that misspell ‘vineyard’ or, in some cases, ‘com.’”

Rage On

THERE’S A PLAINTIVE QUALITY to the Florence Reece song “Which Side Are You On?” that’s also touched with purpose – which isn’t surprising, considering the song’s very clear origin. Reece wrote the lyrics in 1931 after a night in which a group of gun thugs terrorized her and her children as they searched (unsuccessfully) for her union-organizer husband. She drew the melody from her memory of a song that probably was an old “Cruel War”-type ballad titled ”Jack Munro,” which used, for its refrain, the melody of a song titled “Lay the Lily Low,” which may be a Baptist hymn.

All of which is to say that by the time Frederic Rzewski got hold of the tune, it already had been through many changes. It has endured these many decades because the lyric poses a direct and meaningful question, while the stepwise nature of its accompanying refrain has an engagingly hypnotic effect. Rzewski created a set of variations for solo piano as part of his four-song “North American Ballads” collection, and this is the kick-off to composer-pianist Conrad Tao’s new album “American Rage.”

The audacious title of Tao’s recital is well chosen. The U.S.A. is a country founded on dissatisfaction, and, for each successive generation, the vaunted pursuit of happiness has called forth conflict. But, as Paul Robeson observed, “The artist must take sides,” and our history of musical polemics has landed some of those artists in tetchy situations.

The Upright Ape

THERE’S A FEELING OF LUSH LAWNS and expensive orthodonture. Inside the house hang abstract art, a motif that carries onto the floor. Books abound, piled on and around the sparse furnishings. Money and culture are reflected in the appearance of the two couples inhabiting the space; as we quickly learn, they are there to discuss the injury inflicted by the young son of one couple upon the young son of the other.

Sky Seals, Jennifer Cody, Josie DiVincenzo
Photo by Genevieve Fridley

Yasmina Reza’s play “God of Carnage” opened on Broadway in 2009, three years after its premiere in Switzerland and a year after the Christopher Hampton translation was first performed in London. It has gone on to become a regional theater favorite, something I found puzzling because of what struck me as the lackluster quality of the Broadway production I saw. Perhaps I was inured: I grew up with the kind of middle-class combat that energizes this script, and, at least in the few productions I’ve seen, I thought the actors’ hearts weren’t in it.

But I’ve been holding out hope, and that hope now has been more than satisfied. The production at Redhouse Arts Center in Syracuse is a fully committed, take-no-prisoners exploration of the tension imposed by middle-class expectations, and the horrible release that may await only a couple of rum-shots away.

The Telling Takes Us Home

From the Vault Dept.: Lena Spencer died October 23, 1989, nearly thirty years after founding Saratoga’s Caffè Lena, and Utah Phillips (whom I also wrote about here) was among the many performers who’d been nurtured there who made a special tribute trip to perform in her honor. Here’s my Schenectady Gazette review of the event.

                                                                                           

UTAH PHILLIPS MADE A SPECIAL TRIP to town to play a pair of concerts at Caffè Lena last weekend. Friday night he told the first of his sold-out houses a thing or two about the late Lena Spencer and her long-running coffeehouse, paying the sort of level-headed tribute that needs paying when people are soggy with grief.

Utah Phillips at Caffè Lena in an earlier day

“I have no patience with death,” he said. “Death pisses me off.”

Then he launched into his familiar opening song, “Railroading on the Great Divide,” between stanzas of which he recalled the first time, 20 years ago, that he walked up the stairs to the second-floor hall, back when he was first putting together a career on the folksong circuit.

Phillips is unique among such performers in that he harkens to traditions of two or three generations ago but keeps them very much alive in his songs and stories. He has a thousand stories about travelling the rods – hitching rides on freights – and the company of hoboes and tramps. He’s a card-carrying member of the International Workers of the World who can sing you the songs of that movement (“The Wobblies liked to use the old hymn tunes ‘cause they were pretty and wrote new words for them so they made more sense.”)

All Fired Up

Guest Blogger Dept.: Mark Twain’s keen sense of mankind accommodated a semblance of good behavior, but a flurry of books offering detailed rules of etiquette proved to be too much for him, and he undertook to write a parody of them. He never finished the project, but here’s a significant excerpt.

                                                                                     

At a Fire

Form of Tender of Rescue from Strange Young Gentleman to Strange Young Lady at a Fire.

Although through the fiat of a cruel fate, I have been debarred the gracious privilege of your acquaintance, permit me, Miss [here insert name if known], the inestimable honor of offering you the aid of a true and loyal arm against the fiery doom which now o’ershadows you with its crimson wing [this form to be memorized, and practiced in private].

Should she accept, the young gentleman would offer his arm – bowing, and observing “Permit me” – and so escort her to the fire escape and deposit her in it (being careful, if she have no clothes but her night dress, not to seem to notice the irregularity). No form of leave-taking is permissible, further than a formal bow, accompanied by a barely perceptible smile of deferential gratitude for the favor which the young lady has accorded – this smile to be completed at the moment the fire escape starts to slide down, then the features to be recomposed instantly.

A compulsory introduction at a fire is not binding upon the young lady. The young gentleman cannot require recognition at her hands when he next meets her, but must leave her unembarrassed to decide for herself whether she will continue the acquaintanceship or ignore it.

Sowing the Show of Shows

From the Video Vault Dept.: It’s been gratifying to see that the birth of the DVD inspired many an actual treasure to be released on that format right off the bat – including classic vintage television programs. I’d discovered Sid Caesar’s classic TV sketches thanks to occasional re-runs long before I first saw him perform in person, in Neil Simon’s “Last of the Red Hot Lovers” during the early 1970s at Danbury, Connecticut’s Candlewood Theater. He performed at Proctor’s Theatre in Schenectady in 1988, and my review of that show is here – but here’s a brief piece I wrote welcoming a best-of collection of his 1950s TV sketches.

                                                                             

OLD, OLD TELEVISION would seem to be a poor source for a new DVD, but the technology results both in a clearer picture than a VHS release and the ability to subject the source to computer-based editing, which has been skillfully used throughout this release.

It’s a three-disc set of material from various Sid Caesar television ventures in the 1950s, including “Your Show of Shows,” enhanced with recently-filmed interviews that collect comments from Caesar and his illustrious stable of writers and actors – including Woody Allen, Mel Brooks, Neil Simon, Carl Reiner and Larry Gelbart.

The core of each disc, of course, is a set of sketches. These were brilliant when they aired a half-century ago; compared to what passes for comedy today, they’re transcendent. As a solo performer, Caesar was unmatched, and the 1949 “Five Dollar Date” ranks as one of the most breathtaking acting jobs you’ll ever see. Working with his ensemble, he had impeccable timing and a good sense of what would be not just funny but also surprising. Teamed with Nanette Fabray in “The Fur Coat,” his role as aggrieved husband laid the foundation for Jackie Gleason and all subsequent sitcom spouses.

Hungarian Soul

From the Classical Vault Dept.: The Tokyo String Quartet was founded in 1969 by students who had been schooled in Tokyo before continuing their studies at the Juilliard School. They disbanded in 2012, but made several stops in New York’s Capital Region along the way. Here’s my review of one such event in 2009.

                                                                                 

IF THERE WAS A MELANCHOLY EDGE to the happy return of the Tokyo String Quartet, it was only in the programming. Three works tinged (or shot through) with melancholy comprised the program, performed by an internationally renowned ensemble making its fourth appearance for the Friends of Chamber Music – and its first in 28 years.

At the heart of the program was Bartók’s sixth (and last) quartet, a trenchant piece whose misery is explained by the composer’s despair over the fascist incursions into his native Hungary and the death of his mother. Each of the work’s four movements is introduced by a theme marked “mesto,” meaning “sad.” It’s introduced quietly, poignantly, by siolo viola, and each time that theme reappears, another instrument is added. Each of the first three movements takes a vigorous side-trip, but the finale is given over to the “mesto” experience, finishing the piece with as unhappy a mood as music can muster, a soft plucked chirp from the cello the only hint of optimism. There must be something unwaveringly sad in the Hungarian soul, because the world’s most depressing pop song, “Gloomy Sunday,” is also a product of that country.

Downtown Gustatory Pursuit

From the Culinary Vault Dept.: Monday’s post, revisiting my 2008 DiCarlo’s review, mentioned McGeary’s Irish Pub, my 2010 review of which, I realized, isn’t on this blog. It is now. Things have changed, of course, but not really by much.

                                                                                          

“WE DON’T TAKE ADVANTAGE of McGeary’s enough,” I said. We were headed to see a show at Capital Rep and because I’ve become completely neurotic about parking, I was hoping to dump the car early for dinner and not have to move it.

Photo by B. A. Nilsson

Pearl Street’s dining demographic doesn’t really include me, so far as I can figure. While I’m often able to inure myself to a bank of TV screens, should there be a phalanx of sports fans glued to a significant event, their cheers and moans typically prove too startling – not to mention that it zooms me back to my fat-kid-tormented-in-gym-class days.

But my tormentors hang out in Jillian’s, leaving McGeary’s free for more gustatory pursuits. Not that you can’t drink there – the bank of beer taps at the long, wide bar promise all manner of suds. And the TVs are quiet.

“Actually, our food business is booming,” says Tess Collins. “Within a week and a half after reopening here, food has jumped up to 50 percent the business.” She’s the new manager,, although factotum may be the better term. As anyone who knows her from her years at Justin’s and the Lark Tavern can attest, once she’s put in charge, things happen. Good things.

Revealing Cuisine

From the Culinary Vault Dept.: When I reviewed the Albany strip club DiCarlo’s back in 2008, it was still under the management of founder Sal DiCarlo. After he died in 2012, the club was purchased by Tess Collins, an excellent restaurateur who has operated the wonderful McGeary’s in Albany’s downtown for many years. She cut back the hours and changed the menu, so don’t expect the fare described below. But the show goes on.

                                                                             

A SMALL STAGE IS FLANKED by cylindrical columns of bubble-filled water, the color of which changes throughout the show. Color-changing lights flash rhythmically on the stage and a disco ball sends its fragmented sparkle around the room. A reverberant voice announces the next dancer, and a woman strides into view, her costume something she might wear to bed when in a frivolous mood. Men at the bar and the ringside tables are watching, most feigning I’ve-seen-it-all-before disinterest, all of them happily in touch with that persistent adolescent hope of hopes and wish of wishes: I’m about to see a woman’s breasts.

Photo by B. A. Nilsson

It’s Hooters without the hypocrisy. (Of course, the ontology of ecdysiastics is riddled with its own many-layered hypocrisy, but that’s for a different essay.) And it’s worth noting that Hooters is long gone from Albany while DiCarlo’s soldiers on, one of the longest-lived “gentlemen’s clubs” in the area.

I’m not a frequent enough patron to analyze the reason, although I suspect that the club’s professionalism and cleanliness have a lot to do with it. What I want to tell you about, however, is the culinary discovery I made. If you’re looking for an economical lunch of pub fare, and don’t mind the rather loud, distracting entertainment going on around you, you’ll find some very good eats here.

Old Memories

From the Tech Vault Dept.: Here’s a pair of pieces I wrote for the online computer magazine c|net some twenty years ago. I don’t know the exact date these ran, or in what context, or with what artwork, and there’s no way to find screen shots these days. Then again, all the promises made below are so out-of-date that I might as well be talking about daguerreotypes.

                                                                               

THE PRICE OF COMPUTING is memory usage. Every program chews up RAM, but quit the program and you don’t necessarily get the RAM back. That’s where WinRAM Booster Pro comes in handy. Like many similar utilities, it delivers extra memory space by defragmenting what’s in use, closing the gaps and returning impressive amounts of RAM.

An easy-to-follow main screen introduces the components, chief of which is RAM optimization. This can be run on an as-needed basis, but it’s more useful when set to auto-optimize at regular intervals (ten minutes works out as a good amount). Better still, you can enhance application shortcuts by adding an optimization command before the application is invoked.

As Windows runs out of RAM, it uses hard drive space for memory caching. That’s your Windows swap file. WinRAM Booster includes a cache optimization utility that lets you select the minimum and maximum settings, the chunk size (the size of data units swapped to and from the cache), and file cache settings. Six pre-sets simplify your choices, including settings optimized for CD burning, multimedia, and games.

Ramblin’ Boy

From the Literary Vault Dept.: Ernie Pyle turned out the best-written, most-insightful profiles of all manner of Americana as he traveled from state to state in the 1930s. The collection I reviewed below came out thirty years ago, but the excellence of what Pyle wrote has yet to dim.

                                                                                                 

THE WARTIME DISPATCHES Ernie Pyle sent from the front during the early 1940s did a lot to connect a confused nation with its far-flung heroes. When the writer stopped a sniper’s bullet near Okinawa, he became a civilian martyr.

For several years before the war he was a different kind of correspondent. He travelled throughout the 48 states in the late 1930s and wrote, six times a week, about people and places poignant and sentimental. And funny, but with a gentle, midwestern sense of fun. He never laughed at his subjects.

There have been travel writers before and since, but Pyle set a tone that’s hard to match and has never been bettered. He covered vast distances by car, “the speedometer needle never passing 60,” and saw an easygoing nation determinedly pulling itself out of the ravages of the Depression. It was a way of living that’s long behind us, told in a folksy style that never lapses into the self-consciousness of, say, a Garrison Keillor.

“Ernie’s America” collects what editor David Nichols considers the best of Pyle’s American writings. Six times a week for several years is a lot to choose from, but I’m inclined to trust Nichols’ judgment. For one thing, he’s a Hoosier, just like Pyle was. (Although Indiana seems to recognize its writers only with eponymous rest stops on Interstate 80. And you’ll find, at the Pyle Rest Area, that Ernie’s commemorative plaque is obscured by a video game.)

Words, Words

From the Vault Dept.: What a delight it was, 30 years ago, to see a George Carlin performance. He gave us a sense of hope that the lunacy of politics wouldn’t kill us, a hope I no longer enjoy. Here’s my Schenectady Gazette review of that long-ago show.

                                                                                            

GEORGE CARLIN IS FASCINATED BY WORDS. We know that from his notorious “Seven Words You Can’t Say on Television” routine, the commercial recording of which has gotten several radio stations in FCC trouble.

George Carlin

Carlin gave us an update Saturday night at Proctor’s Theatre, regaling a full house with his observations on language and people – but mostly language.

“Americans deal with reality by inventing a soft language to describe it,” he said, and traced the evolution of what was known during World War I as “shell shock” through increasingly detached terms like “battle fatigue,” “operational exhaustion” and, most recently, “post-traumatic stress disorder,” with eight syllables “and a hyphen!”

Although the tradition of shock as comedy has been with us for hundreds of years, Carlin’s barbs are as current as ever. It’s not the shock, sex-oriented comedy of Eddie Murphy; it’s more in line with the Lenny Bruce tradition.

And it’s thanks to Bruce and Carlin that this kind of comedy is seen in clubs and on stage – and on cable television specials, such as the HBO program Carlin told us he’s preparing to tape.

Hence the current tour. Carlin paced the stage, microphone in hand, follow spot leaping to follow, a thin, scraggly guy in a T-shirt with “Da Bronx” printed on it.

Well May the World Go

SEVEN YEARS AGO, Pete Seeger ventured the hope that “the human race has a 50/50 chance to be here a century from now.” He had, at that point, seen almost a century of life himself, and spent the bulk of those years seeking and sharing musical answers to society’s difficult questions.

Seeger’s recorded legacy reflects this long, expansive life, capturing him in a variety of venues and, when he wasn’t solo, working with the most influential performers of the folk-music scene – not to mention jazz and blues and country, because it all melded, under Seeger’s guidance, into a sound that defied classification.

Smithsonian Folkways Recordings celebrated the Seeger centenary with a six-CD set that draws from his hundreds of recordings for Moses Asch’s Folkways label (and a number of ancillary labels) made from 1941 to 1998. It’s as thorough a collection as you’re likely to find, and it sounds terrific – which is a good think, because some of those originals were dashed off onto unstable acetate discs that didn’t sound great when they were first released. Seeger was wont to appear at Asch’s office and record a song or three, which eventually would be compiled into an album, well over a hundred of which emerged over the decades.

General American Fare

From the Food Vault Dept.: Here’s an excellent example of an eatery that thrived for over half a century, then closed (in 2013) while it was still popular. Lake George, too, had thrived, enouigh so that Montcalm owner Den Beckos was able to get a good price for the place from a development company. The site is now a strip mall. Here’s my review (from 2002), a longer version than that which ran in Metroland.

                                                                                  

HERE’S AN EXCELLENT EXAMPLE of a restaurant that promises a specific kind of dining experience and then delivers just what you expect. Delivers it efficiently, with a friendly flair, so that you hardly notice that you’re in the midst of a large, busy room. Lobster and steak (prime rib a specialty) are the dominant menu items in an old-fashioned type of find-dining setting. “We have a commercial kind of menu,” says Dean Beckos, “because we know our clientele and know that this is what they enjoy.”

Photo by B. A. Nilsson

Located on Route 9 south of Lake George village, Montcalm is a year-round, seven-days-a-week operation. Summer business can be tourist crazy, of course, but this place knows how to handle the crowds. We stopped in last week, post-summer season, pre-foliage, and the place still was hopping.

First a little history. The restaurant’s name is taken from the 18th-century French general who besieged Fort William Henry in Lake George, ultimately routing the English and destroying the fort. The original restaurant building, opened in 1956 by Gus and Jo Beckos, was not far from the fort’s site in downtown Lake George. In 1971, the Beckos family expanded the business by putting up a new building just north of Queensbury, in an area now dominated by shopping plazas. This now is the only Montcalm – the old building gave way to Water Slide World – and their son, Dean, is now very much involved in the business.

Wore Sheepskin, Dress to Elude Capture

Guest Blogger Dept.: Les Hendrix wrote for Schenectady’s Daily Gazette for 22 years, retiring in 1997 – not long after filing the doozy of a story below. He went on to work for the NYS Ethics Commission, and died in 2013 at the age of 71. The story below was headlined “Man Caught in Creek Admits Guilt,” and I borrowed its sub-head for this post title. I’m familiar with the Schoharie-Central Bridge area, and, wondering what might of become of this story’s protagonist, offer some more recent follow-ups.

                                                                                       

A CENTRAL BRIDGE MAN who jumped into a creek where police were looking for him pleaded guilty to two felonies Wednesday.

Jameson L. Perrotti, 23, pleaded guilty to four charges in Schoharie County Court and faces a sentence of up to six years in prison. Sentencing was set for April 9.

Assistant District Attorney J. Russell Langwig said Perrotti was apparently in a cocaine-induced state of paranoia on the night of Aug. 28, when he saw a police car pass and thought it was chasing him. Langwig gave this account of what then occurred:

Perrotti started evading the police car that was not chasing him and eventually abandoned his car in the Gallupville area. He stripped off his clothes and fled into the woods.

Then Perrotti broke into a trailer and stole a sheepskin to wear. At another residence, he stole a Ford Escort. Eventually, he ended up asleep in the sheepskin parked in the Escort at the Schoharie park-and-ride lot off I-88, Langwig said.

From Anthony Hope to “Always”

From the Music Vault Dept.: By the time I saw “Sweeney Todd” in its original Broadway run, Cris Groenendaal had taken over the part of Anthony Hope. A dozen years later I shared a stage with him in the Syracuse Opera’s production of “The Merry Widow,” and was delighted to learn from him, a few years after that, that he’d released his first solo album, in collaboration with his wife and frequent performing partner, Sue Anderson. Here’s a review/interview piece I wrote about it.

                                                                                   

CRIS GROENENDAAL'S WICKED SENSE OF HUMOR is in evidence three numbers into his new recording, “Always.” He sings the old chestnut “You Made Me Love You (I Didn't Want to Do It)” with an edge of gritty determination, sounding as if he were dragged kicking and screaming into the amorous state. It's a contrast to the sappiness of other vocalists who have recorded the song, and it's very effective.

The album is subtitled “Music for Our Children,” which has a twofold meaning for the singer. “It's made up of music I was singing to my own children, but it also describes songs we're passing along to a new generation.” He's quick to point out that it's not a children's album. “It's not Barney meets Raffi. It's an adult collection of songs, including one by the Beatles, one by Bob Dylan, and showtunes and standards. The concept was that I was either singing them to our son, who was one year old at the time, or singing about children. Some of it has a kind of lullaby feel to it, but it's eclectic in terms of its sense of humor.”

Groenendaal made his Broadway debut in “Sweeney Todd,” and salutes that show with “Not While I'm Around.” He went on to the Broadway casts of two more Sondheim shows, “Sunday in the Park with George” and “Passion,” and was therefore able to observe that he picks his Broadway appearances well: “I only appear in shows that win the Tony or the Pulitzer.”

Water Retention

From the Theatrical Vault Dept.: Unless a play establishes a rollicking Broadway success, even the finest scripts are inclined to slip from mainstream view even as they journey to theaters around the country. “The Memory of Water” dates from 1996, won an Olivier Award four years later, and became the movie “Before You Go” in 2002. Not a bad pedigree!

                                                                                    

TAKE REASONABLY GOOD CARE OF YOURSELF and avoid safes falling from the sky and you’ll win the consolation prize of becoming an orphan. It’s too late to settle your parental issues, but the ghost of your dead mother might at least offer clue to some sources of your unhappiness.

Corinna May and Elizabeth Aspenlieder
Photo by Kevin Sprague

Thus does Mary regard her elegantly dressed mom, Vi, as “The Memory of Water” gently, quietly begins. Mary is a successful doctor dealing with the amnesia of a current patient, but it’s her own memory that reveals itself to be unreliable as she tangles with her two sisters, Teresa and Catherine, through the course of playwright Shelagh Stephenson’s amusing slice-of-life drama.

Shakespeare & Co.’s rollicking production puts it on the small stage of the Elayne P. Bernstein Theater, giving us a slightly claustrophobic sense of inhabiting Patrick Brennan’s simple country-house bedroom in which the action takes place. The sea is close and coming closer, insists the emerald-lit figure of Vi (Annette Miller, nicely edging her I’m-in-charge spirit with denial). Soon it will consume the house.