Dancing at Lughnasa

Brian Friel’s beloved masterpiece, Directed by Eamon Flack. “ Dancing as if language had surrendered to movement…Dancing as if the very heart of life and all its hopes might be found in those assuaging notes and those hushed rhythms and in those silent and hypnotic movements. Dancing as if language no longer existed because words were no longer necessary. ..” – Michael Donegal, 1936. The Mundy sisters live on the edge of poverty. There’s five of them in one small cottage, plus Christina’s seven-year-old Michael, and now their older brother Jack is home from mission work in Africa. One afternoon, when their dodgy wireless cuts out yet again, Agnes suddenly decides they should all go to the harvest dance for the Festival of Lughnasa – and a wild yearning for life begins to posses these mild-mannered people in their quiet corner of a world beginning its slide towards chaos. This is simply one of the finest plays of the last forty years and never fails to captivate every audience. There’s something mysteriously, deeply moving about the older Michael’s memory of his aunts and mother. Like its cousin play, The Glass Menagerie, it does that magical theatre-thing – it is joyous, and it is beautifully melancholy. This is a great cast at the top of their games– welcome back Tamsin Carroll (remember her acclaimed performance in August: Osage County), Matilda Ridgway (Master and Margarita), Luke Mullins (Angels in America), and more. Unmissable.