Dancing at Lughnasa Comes To Wexford Opera House 11/29-30

Second Age Theatre Company, Ireland's leading Classic Play Company, presents Dancing at Lughnasa in Wexford Opera House on Monday, November 29 and Tuesday, November 30. This will be the company's third presentation of one of Ireland's best loved playwright, Brian Friel.

Dancing at Lughnasa is often referred to as a Memory Play. It uses a favourite Frielian device of framing narrative that turns the main action into a sustained flashback. It's 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 are going to change his, and the sisters lives forever : the arrival of Uncle Jack who, after twenty-five 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 Gerry's, his absent father's two visits during that summer, and the arrival of a knitting factory; the industrial revolution has finally caught up with Ballybeg.

David Horan, who is currently garnering rave reviews in the New York Times for his production of Hue and Cry, will make his directing debut for Second Age Theatre Company. He has assembled an impressive cast that includes; Charlie Bonner, a native of Donegal, to play the role of Michael, the play's narrator. Kate, the unyielding, primly efficient schoolteacher is played by Donna Dent, a regular on both the Abbey and Gate stage. Susannah De Wrixon, who is both an established actor and cabaret singer, will play fun loving and spirited Maggie. Maeve Fitzgerald, Winner of last year's Best Supporting Actress Award Irish Times, and also Winner of the Absolut Fringe Festival Best Actress Award 2009, will play Rose, the simple guileless sister. Agnes, stiff and reserved, will be played by Kate Nic Chonaonaigh, fresh from her success with this year's Fringe festival, where her production From The Heart was nominated in three different categories. Chris, Michael's mother, is played by Marie Ruane, who most recently appeared in the Gate Theatre's production of Death of a Salesman. Completing this superb cast is Garrett Keogh, who played Claudius in the Second Age production of Hamlet earlier this year. Together their credits include Angela's Ashes, Tudors, Omagh, Bloom, Fair City and The Clinic.

Dancing at Lughnasa is referred to by many as perhaps the most autobiographical of all Friel's plays. A look through the many manuscripts at the National Library of Ireland reveals documents such as an obituary from the Derry Journal dated 10 July 1950 that reads " For over thirty-five years Rev. Father Macloone had labored in the Ugandan mission fields until failing health compelled him to relinquish a missionary career which carried he carried out with great zeal and dauntless courage earned for him the proud title of Tirchonaill's Father Damien" or postcards addressed to Friel's aunts, Alice, Christina, Kate and Maggie, and to his Uncle Bernard Joseph Macloone. The Father Jack of Dancing at Lughnasa bears more than a striking similarity to that of Friel's own Uncle, and Friel's own Aunts bear the same names as those of his characters in Dancing at Lughnasa.

Director David Horan believes that in every phrase Friel offers us vividly real women, but all through the sepia toned memory of the plays narrator. Ballybeg, the claustrophobically lifeless and loveless small town, through the memory of Michael our narrator, is in the process of being re-written as idyll. It's a play that is at once heartbreaking, poignant, and uproariously funny. He believes that the audience will find themselves laughing uncontrollably one minute, and the next their eyes will be filled with a flood of stinging tears. Whatever the mood happens to be, at every moment the play feels startlingly true, tender and fresh.

Dancing at Lughnasa runs for 3 performances at Wexford Opera House on Monday, November 29 at 1pm and Tuesday, November 30 at 1pm and 8pm. Tickets are €18/€22 /€25 and are available online at www.wexfordoperahouse.ie or by calling the box office on 053 912 2144. SkyView Café opens 1 hour prior to the performance for light snacks and refreshments.

 

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