Synopsis An award winning and moving Irish drama set in the closing days of the long hot summer of 1936. A tender portrait of a family of five strong, single women whose lives are revitalised by the breathtaking music and dancing of their Donegal home. 1990 Laurence Olivier Award and Broadway Award for Best New Play. (Lughnasa is pronounced Loo-na-sa) CQS Space at the Old Vic
The Old Vic revival of Brian Friel's multi award-winning 1990 play Dancing at Lughnasa opened last week (5 March 2009, previews from 26 February), with the South Bank venue continuing to utilise its reconfigured in-the-round space, specially constructed for last year's run of Alan Ayckbourn's The Norman Conquests (See News, 20 May 2008).
The production marks the stage debut of pop singer Andrea Corr who plays Chris, the youngest of the five Mundy Sisters sharing a cottage in County Donegal in the 1930s. The cast also includes Niamh Cusack, Michelle Fairley, Simone Kirby, Susan Lynch, Finbar Lynch, Peter McDonald and Jo Stone-Fewings as Chris' fickle lover Gerry. It's directed by Anna Mackmin (who helmed the recent West End outing of David Eldridge's Under the Blue Sky), with design by Lez Brotherston.
With a good handful of five stars, Dancing at Lughnasa marks a swift turnaround in the critical fortunes of the Old Vic following the recently mauled Complicit. Most critics hailed the play as Friel's “masterpiece” and appreciated the intimacy of the in-the-round staging. The cast, particularly Stone-Fewings, Fairley and Cusack, were also roundly praised, as was debutant Corr – making a “better than decent stage debut” according to Whatsonstage.com's Michael Coveney. And director Anna wasn't the only Mackmin receiving praise – her sister Scarlett Mackmin, the play's choreographer, was also lauded for her arrangement of the play's signature scene, the wild, improtu “foot-stamping fling”.
Michael Coveney on Whatsonstage.com (five stars) - “The overlap of Catholic piety and pagan ritual lends the play a thrumming, insidious instability … The five sisters ... are supremely well cast: Michelle Fairley is the only wage-earner, a teacher who tries to keep order; Susan Lynch is the repressed, bespectacled Agnes and Simone Kirby the younger, impetuous Rose, both of them knitters; and Andrea Corr of the folk singing group makes a better than decent stage debut as Chris, Michael’s mother … The conjunction of sacred and secular is a wonderfully sustained poetic thread in a play that delights and moves you to tears in equal measure and marks a total, instant recovery for Kevin Spacey’s Old Vic after the stuttering Complicit.”
Benedict Nightingale in The Times(five stars) - “Is Brian Friel’s masterpiece? After seeing its British premiere at the National in 1990 I thought so, and Anna Mackmin’s revival, with Michelle Fairley giving a terrific performance and Andrea Corr and Niamh Cusack acting their old woolly socks off, leaves me equally moved … If the great Irish dramatist has written anything warmer and wiser, I don’t know it … Friel has translated Chekhov, and you can see why. He has the Russian’s talent, not just for bringing a blend of love, humour, nostalgia, realism and grief to a microcosm that feels macrocosmic, but for seeing people from outside as well as feeling them from inside.”
Charles Spencer in the Daily Telegraph(five stars) - “After the dismal political thriller that was Complicit … comes this utterly beguiling, deeply moving revival of one of Brian Friel's greatest plays … One moment you are laughing uproariously, the next your eyes are filled with stinging tears. Whatever the mood happens to be, at every moment the play feels startlingly true, tender and fresh … Anna Mackmin's beautifully acted production, staged in the round on a tree-dominated design by Lez Brotherston that cleverly suggests the bleak winter that is to follow the play's heady summer, is marvellously alert to its shifting moods. Mackmin and her company keep turning the mood on a sixpence, and in this play Friel comes closer to Chekhov at his greatest than any other living writer I can think of.”
Michael Billington in the Guardian (four stars) - “The play gains much from the Old Vic's new in-the-round formation in which every facial and design detail is visible. Andrea Corr … makes her dramatic debut as Chris and does little more than convey the character's enraptured innocence. But there is sterling support from Michelle Fairley as the inflexible, iron-willed Kate, and Niamh Cusack as the jocular, insubordinate Maggie. Jo Stone-Fewings invests Chris's fly-by-night lover with an utterly plausible straw-hatted gaiety, and Finbar Lynch is both sad and funny as the priestly brother who has returned from Uganda a fervently committed ritualist. You leave convinced that this is one of the octogenarian Friel's finest plays.”
Quentin Letts in the Daily Mail (four stars) - “This is a great rendition of Mr Friel’s play. The cast includes not only Niamh Cusack, Finbar Lynch and the superb Jo Stone-Fewings ... but also the folk-pop singer Andrea Corr. She holds her own — no mean feat in such a company … One small failure of detail here: all the actresses seem to have shaved legs, whereas Irish spinsters, in my fairly broad experience, tend to be strangers to the ladies’ Philishave … Dancing at Lughnasa is a fine show — and yet it would have been so much better had it been performed up on the Old Vic’s noble stage. Instead it is down in-the-round: confined, cluttered, made untidy by the sight of audience members on the far side of the round holding plastic glasses of wine.”
- by Theo Bosanquet
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Brian Friel has turned eighty this year and he was at the Old Vic on opening night to see this glorious revival by Anna Mackmin of what is certainly one of his very best plays, if not his masterpiece.
The second show in a few days to be set in 1936 – Burnt by the Sun is another kind of idyll, threatened by Stalin’s reign of terror; the Irish community here is feeling the effects at last of the Industrial Revolution, and the Spanish Civil War is a remote reality – Dancing at Lughnasa is a poignant memory play about five sisters in Friel’s perennial fictional Donegal village of Ballybeg.
One of the sisters was the unmarried mother of Peter McDonald’s grown-up Michael, who remembers this summer at the harvest festival time of the pagan god Lugh when he was seven years old. Uncle Jack (growly, slightly discombobulated Finbar Lynch), is a priest who has returned from his missionary work in a leper colony in Uganda, and his father, Gerry (sprightly, slightly caddish Jo Stone-Fewings), a Welsh gramophone salesman, calls by en route to join the International Brigade.
The overlap of Catholic piety and pagan ritual lends the play a thrumming, insidious instability, famously represented in the scene where the five sisters break out in a joyous, stomping dance around the kitchen as if possessed by forbidden dreams, led by Niamh Cusack’s ecstatic Maggie, the lynchpin domesticated sister, face and hands daubed in the flour of the soda bread she’s making.
The five sisters – “those five brave Glenties women” to whom Friel dedicates the play, his mother and aunts (though he was not born out of wedlock) – are supremely well cast: Michelle Fairley is the only wage-earner, a teacher who tries to keep order; Susan Lynch is the repressed, bespectacled Agnes and Simone Kirby the younger, impetuous Rose, both of them knitters; and Andrea Corr of the folk singing group makes a better than decent stage debut as Chris, Michael’s mother.
It is a magical dramatic evocation. Anyone who saw the original Abbey production (which came to the National in 1990 and on to the West End) will remember Joe Vanek’s shimmering golden wheat field flecked with poppies. Here, the signal feature of Lez Brotherston’s superb in-the-round design is a great bare sycamore tree spreading over the flag-stoned kitchen with its stove, pots, straw baskets, wireless and floral housecoats.
The exteriors scenes, flooded with popular music of the 1930s, can be played around the border, and Michael can haunt the action more organically than on the proscenium stage. The conjunction of sacred and secular is a wonderfully sustained poetic thread in a play that delights and moves you to tears in equal measure and marks a total, instant recovery for Kevin Spacey’s Old Vic after the stuttering Complicit.
David Baxter sums it up well here. The narrator certainly spent most of his time swiveling around so that the audience could catch at least some of what he was saying, but his fellow actors this wasn't an option and so many in the audience would have struggled to catch what was being said and particular with the heavy accents employed. Apart from that fundamental flaw with the staging they are an exceptional cast. The women in particular are terrific, but one surprise for me was Jo Stone-Fewing's Welsh philanderer Gerry - he really is adorable. I suspect, seeing Sonia Friedman's name on the credits, its destined for an NYC transfer - it would, of course, fit perfectly the venue currently occupied by the Norman Conquests. As for here, its definitely worth seeing, but try and get close to the stage. - rds
06 May 09
The ecstatic reviews created such high expectations but I was left disappointed and underwhelmed. The main problem for me was that the main drama took place in Peter McDonald's narration and that some of that seemed highly unlikely given the way the characters had been portrayed (to go further would give away too much of the story). This created the effect of appearing too much like a book being dramatised. The quality of the actibg was exceptional, which was as expected from such a strong cast. Anna Mackmin's staging could not solve the problems of theatre-in-the-round, particularly actors spending so much time with their backs to large portions of the audience. However it did provide extremely close proximity to the wondrously beautiful Andrea Corr. Although her facial expressions appear to be limited and pre-programmed it is otherwise difficult to believe that this is her stage debut and she was excellent as possibly the most interesting Munday sister. Worth seeing for such an exceptional ensemble but disappointing as a piece. - David Baxter
22 Apr 09
I think these 5 stars are a bit OTT, though it is a very good revival. My recollection of the first production at the National some 18 years ago is of something uplifting with lots of dancing and wistful Irishness! This procuction seems somewhat more poignant, more reflective and with more depth. What stayed with me with this time is the sad lack of fulfillment of the lives of these five sisters and the desperate need for young Michael to leave it all behind.
I like the idea of the older Michael as narrator, though the other actors speaking to the invisible young Michael sometimes seemed clumsy. The in-the-round configuraion, so perfect for The Norman Conquests, may be restrictive for this play. You can't fault the uniformly excellent performances, though. A hit for the Old Vic hot on the heels of the Complicit turkey! - Gareth James
09 Mar 09
Miss it at your peril. A thrillingly poignat yet funny play, brilliantly directed with a fantastic cast. Unfair to name names, but Niamh Cusack and Michelle Fairley are sublime. Remember the Kleenex for both the laughter and the tears. - Geraldine
The Old Vic is one of the oldest theatres in London and famous throughout the English speaking world. Long known as 'the actors theatre', many of the greatest performers of the last century have played on its stage. In September 2004, The Old Vic Theatre Company was launched, under the artistic leadership of Kevin Spacey, to present a wide range of work, from the classic to the new, to appeal to both traditional theatre-goers and new audiences.
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