With the late Brien Friel arguably being one of the best playwrights of the last half century, expectations for any production of his work are always going to be incredibly high. His numerous plays are known for their warmth, depth and intimate study of character; as audiences, we’ve come to know and love his fictional town of Ballybeg and all those who live in it. Friel’s work is revered the world over for how it touches the heart and joins joy and sorrow hand in hand.
This year marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the premiere of Dancing at Lughnasa and so its return to Dublin, to the Gaiety Theatre, is undoubtedly a special moment. The story follows a now grown-up Michael, who recounts the summer he spent as a child with his aunts, the five Mundy sisters, and their brother Jack in 1936. These happy memories – of the harvest, of his aunts and the days they spent dancing – are tinged by hindsight: his knowledge now that they could not last forever. And indeed, Michael, played beautifully by Charlie Bonner, cuts a lonely figure as he stares on wistfully from the side of the stage.
There is so much that’s wonderful about Dancing at Lughnasa that it’s impossible not to enjoy; with playwriting this good and this well-crafted, the brilliant story will always carry the audience. Indeed its iconic scene, where the sisters abandon their chores, throw flour into the air, shriek and dance, is as effervescent as it is heart-wrenching.
However, director Annabelle Comyn’s production, with its colourless design and vast suspended, scuffed mirror looming over the action, draws a lot of the warmth from the play. While Paul O’Mahony’s design nods to the play’s nature as a recollection, it provides a cold backdrop against which the performances feel hollow at times. Friel’s play takes place as August fades to September, against the backdrop of the harvest season and the Festival of Lughnasa. This production feels bare, rather than bountiful, with Friel’s beautifully rich language oddly juxtaposed against the skeletal set and some thinly drawn performances from the cast, leaving the whole thing feeling somewhat lifeless at times.
While Cara Kelly is loveable and humorous as Maggie, Catherine McCormack as the prim and proper Kate struggles to bring authenticity to her performance, not least with her Donegal accent that is strongly flavoured by her Surrey upbringing. Matt Tait struggles to charm as Gerry Evans, and indeed often it feels there’s a lack of chemistry between the cast as a whole.
Equally, it’s striking that the production simply presents a somewhat literal and traditional rendering of the play, without really engaging with what its revival twenty-five years after its premiere means – and indeed what it asks of an audience, and of contemporary Ireland now. Other than as an homage to Friel, whose genius and legacy I can’t dispute, why must it be revived now? What can it tell us about ourselves at this moment in time that it couldn’t before? What can we find in the play that we haven’t before, and show to the audience anew? What are we meant to take away from it? Sadly this production does not seem to ask these questions, let alone answer them.
Dancing at Lughnasa is nonetheless an enjoyable enough evening at the theatre, if not a frustrating one at times. If anything, it is still, and always will be, a privilege to be able to hear and savour Friel’s powerful and captivating language, and be drawn into such a unique, beautiful world.
Dancing at Lughnasa is playing at the Gaiety Theatre until 11 October as part of the Dublin Theatre Festival. For more information and tickets, see the Dublin Theatre Festival website. Photo: Lyric Theatre Belfast.
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