Reviewed by James
Karas
The Shaw Festival delivers a pitch-perfect production of Dancing
at Lughnasa that captures the lyricism, poignancy, humour and beauty of
Brian Friel’s memory play.
The play is about five sisters living on the outskirts of a village in
County Donegal in Ireland in 1936. They are almost on the edge of civilization
leading lives of poverty, hope, dreams and expectations all of it seen by us
through the memory of Michael (Patrick Galligan), the son of one of the
sisters. He looks back and narrates part of the story a couple of decades after
the events. Like all memories, it is a mixture of nostalgia, ruefulness,
sadness and lyrical cadences.
The cast of Dancing at Lughnasa. Photo by David Cooper.
The five sisters, played like a finely
tuned musical quintet, are the schoolteacher Kate (Fiona Byrne), the
housekeeper Maggie (Tara Rosling), the knitters Agnes (Claire Jullien) and Rose
(Diana Donnelly), and Michael’s mother Christina (Sarena Parmar). They are
different persons but, if I may continue the musical ensemble simile, combine
to express the all-important atmosphere of the play. The essentially closed
society that they inhabit provides a chance, however evanescent, to have some
fun, to dance, to release some energy, to participate in something almost
orgiastic and perhaps even Dionysian in the Lughnasa harvest festival.
Their only contact with the outside world
while at home is a very unreliable radio but the sisters manage to start
dancing, first haltingly and slowly joyfully, and then almost frenetically as
they release all their inhibitions even for a few minutes.
Reality intrudes. Their brother Father Jack (Peter Millard), a
missionary priest has returned from Africa not quite in a cloud of glory but
under very suspicious circumstances. Michael’s father Gerry (Kristopher Bowman)
makes an appearance. He is ne’er-do-well dance teacher, gramophone salesman and
dreamer who claims to have seen a unicorn and is off to Spain to fight with the
International Brigade. He is able to charm Christina into dancing with him and
gives her some moments of bliss.
Tara Rosling as Maggie in Dancing at Lughnasa. Photo by David Cooper.
Internal and external factors lead to the moving break-up of the world
of the five sisters. The economy changes and Kate loses her teaching job, Rose
and Agnes lose their home-knitting jobs because a factory has come in, Father
Jack’s lunacy becomes more pronounced and in the end all that is left is
Michael’s moving memory of events long past.
I write at length about the play because it captures the people and the
atmosphere that I try to describe with such accuracy and emotional impact. The
actors playing the five sisters, from the tough Kate to the simpleton Rose, to
the drudging Maggie give expression to a vanishing world that the women try
keep together but which unravels in front of their eyes.
Galligan as the adult Michael narrates the story wistfully and speaks
his lines as a boy of seven.
Director Krista Jackson conducts the cast in a beautiful
and sensitive rendition of Friel’s poetry.
Sue LePage’s set consists of a country village kitchen on the right, a
prominently placed Marconi radio in the center with the rest of the stage being
open space. With the lighting design of Louise Guinand, it is a perfect representation
of what an adult may remember from his childhood and is thoroughly appropriate.
A night at the theatre not to be missed.
_____
Dancing at Lughnasa by Brian Friel runs in repertory until October 15, 2017 at the Royal
George Theatre, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario. www.shawfest.com.
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