Irish playwright Brian Friel’s “Dancing at Lughnasa,” currently being produced by the Keegan Theatre, is crafted of beautiful language. His vivid portraits of five sisters in the fictional town of Ballybeg in County Donegal is full of spirited dialogue and poetic monologue.
But the real power of this play is in the silent undercurrents that exist, the communication that goes on among the sisters through an unspoken language and through gestures, music and dance.
‘Dancing at Lughnasa’
Where: The Keegan Theatre, 1742 Church St. NW
When: 8 p.m. Thursday to Saturday, 3 p.m. Sunday
Info: $25 to $30; 202-892-0202; keegantheatre.com
“Dancing at Lughnasa” is a memory play narrated by Michael Evans (Colin Smith), a middle-aged man who appears periodically, remembering August of 1936, when he was 7. He lived with his mother, Chris Mundy (Brianna Letourneau), and her four sisters as they struggled to exist on almost no income.
Chris is a sweet young woman, who was seduced and abandoned by Michael’s father, Gerry Evans (Matthew Keenan), a charming gramophone salesman from Wales who weaves back into Ballybeg twice during the play. The oldest sister, Kate (Kerri Rambow) is a schoolteacher, the only Mundy with a full-time job, a devout Christian who tries to keep the family financially afloat.
Maggie (Susan Marie Rhea) is a renegade: energetic, forceful, always ready with a riddle. Agnes (Elizabeth Jernigan) is ethereal and otherworldly. She and the youngest girl, Rose (Emily Levey), knit gloves to bring in extra income. The actors playing the sisters work as an effective ensemble, each with her own place in the hierarchy of the family, each with her distinct personality.
Several important things happen during the weeks that Michael recalls. First, a wireless set arrives, providing romantic music to dance to, offering brief moments of respite from the hardscrabble Ballybeg life.
More importantly, it provides lively Celtic music, which on one occasion inspires the sisters to dance wildly, exhibiting their own private styles of expression. It is the most memorable scene in the play, allowing, as words cannot, a view into the souls of these five women.
August 1936 also saw the return of the sisters’ older brother, Jack (Kevin Adams), who was a missionary in a Ugandan leper colony for many years. Ostensibly he returns because he has malaria, but there’s the suggestion that he has been sent home in disgrace, having lost his connection to the Catholic Church. Adams is moving as Jack, particularly in a scene when he offers an inspired demonstration of a Ugandan ritual celebrating the connection between the religious and the profane.
Set designer George Lucas has created one small raised area to signify the humble room where the sisters cook, fold laundry, iron and knit; a small outdoor space exists next to it. The set neatly describes the Mundy sisters’ limited circumstances.
Directors Mark A. Rhea and Abigail Isaac skillfully guide their cast to get to the language behind the words in Friel’s play, successfully reconstructing that period in Michael’s memory when atmosphere was “more real than incident,” when the bonds of music and dance connect the sisters better than language can, a time when “words were no longer necessary.”
