‘Dancing at Lughnasa’ in new production from Second Age

Date Published: {J}

Second Age Theatre Company, Ireland’s leading classic play company, presents Dancing at Lughnasa in the Town Hall Theatre from Tuesday, December 7, to Saturday, December 11, as part of a national tour. This will be the company’s third presentation of one of Ireland’s best loved playwright, Brian Friel. The company presented Philadelphia, Here I Come! in 1990 and more recently in 2007.

Dancing at Lughnasa, Friel’s most autobiographical play, is the story of five unmarried sisters living in a cottage just outside Friel’s fictional Ballybeg; a microcosm of rural Ireland. Their story is told by the grown up love child of the youngest sister, Chris. As a young man he casts his mind back to late Summer 1936, when he was seven, and he relates some of the events that will change his, and the sisters lives forever: the arrival of Uncle Jack who, after 25 years as a missionary in a remote village in Uganda, has been sent home for “going native”; the purchase of a Marconi wireless set, and the two visits from Gerry, his absent father, during that summer. Also, with the arrival of a knitting factory, the industrial revolution has finally caught up with Ballybeg.

David Horan has recently been garnering rave reviews in The New York Times for his production of Hue and Cry, while making his directing debut for Second Age Theatre Company.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.