Memory River: A Kind of September

Saturday Night Live had a recurring sketch starring Tom Hanks as "Mr. Short Term Memory", who was perpetually surprised by everything. In her play Memory River, Vanda, an Edward Albee Fellow, takes the theme and plays it for drama, using as her basis the true story of HM, a textbook case of a man who was treated for epilepsy by removing his hippocampus and parts of his amygdale. Though the procedure was a limited success in reducing HM's epileptic seizures, he lost his ability to remember things for more than 20-30 seconds at a time.

Vanda spins the play into a consideration of memory by creating the character of Dr. Nebbins (Michelle Fulves) who is getting an award for her work derived from HM's case, and who is living too much in the past since her lover Claire (Janelle Mims) is gone. Nebbens reminisces about HM's past as a teen (Paul Caiola), living with his doting Mom (Diane Tyler) and distant Dad (Gary Cowling), and about her own life as a young woman (Lian-Marie Holmes).

Though the facts of the case are interesting, the play is only fitfully so. It's an unwieldy mash-up of fictionalized medical documentary (reminiscent of Harold Pinter's A Kind of Alaska), kitchen-sink family drama, a play about a doctor's desiderata (e.g. Equus) and ghost story/memory play. The script skips around in time without much clear point. Exposition is painfully slotted into place, despite having a leading character who already talks to the audience and could have served as a narrator. Some subplots are merely dropped without comment. The character is referred to as HM (as he is referred to in medical textbooks) throughout the play even by his family and friends- and there's an awkward lampshading moment where his mother's last name is given as "M" because another character can't read her name tag, in a scene where we didn't really need to know her name. It's unclear how much of the play is in the head of Dr. Nebbins- presumably all of it, though how she knows so much information about HM's early life is unclear- she's studying him, but then doesn't recognize his mother later... It's not clear what happened to Claire- she may be dead, or simply gone. Claire seems at first to have a dramatic function as the conscience of science- wondering who benefits from willful destruction in the name of progress (e.g., though her ideas are frustratingly never seriously debated, merely mentioned and dismissed.

When the play does work (and there are several very nice moments), it's fascinating. The scene with Older HM (also played by Gary Cowling) is heartbreaking, though it takes far too long to get there. There's the kernel of an interesting play here, though it seems now too sloppy and fragmented to fully explore anything other than a general theme of "memories".

The acting is spotty, with excellent performances given by Caiola, Cowling, Tyler, and Holmes. Troy Miller's direction keeps the play moving from scene to scene, though frequent costume changes (sometimes justified, when the actors play more than one character, sometimes not, and then some characters never change costume) clearly tax the actors.

Memory River
By Vanda
Presented by Emerging Artists Theatre,
Part of the 2009 Spring EATfest

TADA Theatre

15 West 28th Street, 2nd Floor

Series A - Monday & Thursday at 7pm, Sunday at 4:30pm
Series B - Tuesday & Friday 7pm, Sunday at 7:30pm
Memory River (Series C) - Wednesday & Saturday at 7pm, Sunday at 1pm
The Chiselers (Series D)- Thursday - Saturday at 9:30pm
Through March 8th

Tickets are $18, available at 866-811-4111 or www.eatheatre.org.

Photo Credit: Ned Thorne.  Michelle Fulves and Gary Cowling in a publicity shot for Memory River