Dancing at Lughnasa at Sheffield’s Crucible Theatre – review

It’s not often you can sense the quality of a production from the set, but Francis O’Connor’s wonderful use of the vast Crucible thrust stage convinced me that Elizabeth Newman’s take on Brian Friel’s classic would be memorable.

At the back, the hay rises up to the horizon; at the front, stones with enigmatic symbols dominate; the space in between has widely spread out articles of furniture such as a table, a stove with a chimney and, most importantly, a wireless. Above, a huge disc (the sun?) hangs above branches. Newman says, for the Crucible stage, literalism is not enough: “Instead, we aim for a theatrical reality. Something symbolic, suggestive.”

As Michael says in his final monologue, memories are more about atmosphere than incident – and the atmosphere is perfect. Michael, from a standpoint a generation later, narrates the events that he witnessed as a seven-year-old boy. 1936 was the first summer of the wireless, the last summer of all five sisters together, the summer Father Jack came, Kate lost her job, and the summer feckless Gerry went off to the Spanish Civil War.

Michael’s narrations are crucial to the play and, delivered with poetic clarity by Kwaku Fortune, they add immeasurably to the play’s emotional weight. He looks in at a time when the five sisters are living together – Kate, a schoolteacher and the only serious bread-winner, Agnes and Rose working from home making gloves, Maggie minding house with Chris, Michael’s mother.

That summer, Father Jack has returned home from Africa, apparently sent home because of the ill effects of malaria. Gerry, Michael’s father, puts in a couple of appearances, and maybe, having managed at best one visit a year, he might just be settling down once he has returned from Spain. The effect of the narrations is to puncture hopes and destroy possibilities – Michael knows what happened to the sisters, Father Jack and Gerry.

Two events strike home: the arrival of Jack and the coming of the Industrial Revolution to Ballybeg.

Jack, having apparently lost his use of English to Swahili, regains it gradually to regale a horrified Kate with tales of African ceremonies: Jack has gone native and that’s why he’s been returned to Ireland. This is enough for the parish priest to remove Kate from her schoolteacher role. And a factory opens: no more gloves required from home workers, so emigration looms for Agnes and Rose.

The sisters’ performances are pitch-perfect, Natalie Radmall-Quirke (Kate) and Siobhan O’Kelly (Maggie) are outstanding. Radmall-Quirke’s first entrance seems to bring the sisters to attention and she cannot tolerate Jack’s paganism or Rose’s wanderings, yet she joins, with some precise steps, in the riot of wild dancing set off by Maggie’s shriek. That is prompted by Maggie’s recall of her youthful dancing days; now her high spirits are limited to her Woodbines and little games with Michael.

Martha Dunlea’s Chris comes to life in the company of Marcus Rutherford’s insouciantly irresponsible Gerry, dancing with him to “Dancing in the Dark” and barely taking her eyes off him. Laura Pyper’s caring Agnes and Rachel O’Connell’s emotionally immature Rose gradually emerge from the all-enveloping sisterhood to become individuals with their own lives to lead – for good or ill.

Finally, there’s Jack, gradually emerging into (temporary) better health and memory, with his glowing accounts of Ryangan ceremonies, involving sacrifices and copious consumption of palm wine. Frank Laverty’s matter-of-fact tone in relating these (to Kate in particular) heathen excesses is summed up by his statement that “they’re very like us.”

The programme lists maybe ten things the play is about. Should we not add “the fragility of what seems permanent”?