DANCING AT LUGHNASA. To 15 October.
Manchester
DANCING AT LUGHNASA
by Brian Friel
Library Theatre To 15 October 2005
Mon-Thu 7.30pm Fri-Sat 8pm Mat 28 Sept, 1, 8, 12, 15 Oct 3pm 5 Oct 2pm
Audio-described 12 Oct 7.30pm 15 Oct 3pm
BSL Signed 5 Oct 7.30pm
Captioned 13 Oct
Runs 2hr 45min One interval
TICKETS: 0161 236 7110
www.librarytheatre.com
Review: Timothy Ramsden 23 September
Successful revival of a fine play.This memory play unfolds on a Donegal farm in 1936, where 5 sisters live together near playwright Brian Friel's regular fictional town of Ballybeg. The narrative voice is the adult Michael's looking back to his childhood perceptions of these sisters, his father and a family brother back from Africa. Things proceed straightforwardly, the 1936 world asserting itself as the play's present tense through the moments of recall. Then, part-way through the second act, Friel pulls a structural coup as Michael tells what will happen to the sisters.
Many a playwright would place this information at the end. By shifting it earlier Friel puts the sisters in a different, past-tense light. Just at the right point, after a fissure's opened between their awareness of each others' lives, splitting open their small, cohesive world.
Roger Haines follows his fine production of Friel's other most celebrated play Translations with a Lughnasa that's almost as good. The Library Theatre's revolve moves the family living-room into and out of focus, turning to show an exterior section that also captures the family in a photo-like group at start and end.
This frozen past is opened up through the action, paralleling the uncertainties surrounding the family in a world where both modern technology and older beliefs make their presence felt: the harvest rituals of pagan god Lugh, whose feast gives the play its title. And Uncle Jack, a Catholic missionary gone native, his mind in some disorder but speaking frankly of the advantages in polygamy.
If there's a limit to the production's impact, it comes from the comparatively outsider men. J D Kelleher as adult narrator, and responding as a child to his aunts' words (addressed not to the actor, but to an imagined young Michael), and Robert Perkins as Michael's waywardly happy father, turning up for occasional visits, do well enough but without the fully-rounded characterisation Gary Lilburn gives the happily distracted Jack or which breathes through the 5 women. Who are the play's core and, through neatly distinct performances have their contrasting personalities, controlling, tolerant, protective and childishly happy, brought finely to life in Manchester.
Kate: Deirdre Monaghan
Maggie: Mary McEvoy
Rose: Sarah Corbbett
Agnes: Stella Madden
Chris: Ciara O'Callaghan
Michael: J D Kelleher
Gerry: Robert Perkins
Jack: Gary Lilburn
Director: Roger Haines
Designer: Judith Croft
Lighting: Nick Richings
Sound: Paul Gregory
Choreographer: Bill Deamer
Dialect coach: Sally Hague
Assistant director: Marie McCarthy
Assistant choreographer: Kylie Anne Cruickshanks
2005-09-28 07:42:18