The Abbey Theater is in town with “Dancing at Lughnasa,” a wistful autobiographical Brian Friel play, which opened in Dublin in 1990 and went on to win the Olivier Award in London this year. The play—which is at the Plymouth with the original cast (except in three instances) and in essentially the same production (designed by Joe Vanek) as in London—combines Irish desperation with Chekhovian languor, and how you respond to it depends a good deal on your personality and preoccupations: either you will find it lovely and lyrical or else it will strike you as the memory play from Hell.
Guiding us through the play is a sort of Tom Wingfield author-narrator, Michael (Gerald McSorley), who directs our attention to a particular fortnight in 1936, which he associates with the appearance in his life of two things: a wireless set and his Uncle Jack, back at the family farm in Donegal after twenty-five years as a missionary in Africa. Throughout the play, Michael alternates between playing narrator and playing himself as a seven-year-old. As narrator, Michael tells us not only what we are about to see acted out but how he felt about it and, by implication, how it has affected his life. He describes the other characters, and then we watch them live up to his description.
There’s proper Aunt Kate (Rosaleen Linehan), eldest of the five Mundy sisters, who teaches school; Aunt Maggie (Dearbhla Molloy), the “joker” in the family; Aunt Agnes (Bríd Brennan), who at thirty-five already seems like an old lady; Aunt Rose (Bríd Ní Neachtain), a bit simple in the head; and Michael’s mother, Chris (Catherine Byrne), the youngest, who bore him out of wedlock. The sisters knit and fold laundry, feed the chickens, and argue about who will make tea. They go into the village and return with gossip and news. And they look after Jack (Donal Donnelly), a former Army chaplain, whose years in Africa have left him somewhat the worse for malaria and with a tendency to speak in Swahili and mistake his sisters for his houseboy. Meanwhile, Michael’s wastrel father, Gerry (Robert Gwilym)—a travelling salesman and dime-store charmer, in town on a rare visit—keeps dropping by.
People are always comparing Friel to Chekhov. But Chekhov wrote about relationships between people; this is a play about themes—paganism and the harvest and the industrial revolution and that unfair and disappointing thing called life. Friel clearly believes that if you have a good trope you should run with it. There’s a scene in which Aunt Maggie comes out with her hands cupped and tells the little boy that she has something to show him. She tells him to watch carefully, then opens her hands (they’re empty) and says, “Did you see it?” Michael says yes, he did, and she says, “Wasn’t it wonderful?…The trouble is, just one quick glimpse, that’s all you ever get.” After that, the metaphors come thick and fast: life as a dance competition being supervised by a panel of blind-drunk judges; the radio that gives such pleasure but only plays for a short time before going on the fritz; the father who says he thought of bringing a gift, only they didn’t have the bicycle in the right color. Even cigarettes come in a pack that is one short.
Then, there’s all the stuff about pre-Christian ritual: references to face painting and animal sacrifice, rebirth and ancestral spirits and people going up in flames, ceremonial hats and the festival of Lugh, god of the harvest. And Friel makes exhaustive use of the dancing motif—all of it adding up to the idea that a little bit of pagan abandon in our Christian lives might not be a bad thing. The number of speeches that begin “I remember” is beyond belief—speeches full of thematic information.
And the conventions are so tiresome. One of the sisters is discovered to be missing, and a melodramatic conversation ensues. No sooner has the discussion ceased and a search been organized than she’s spotted coming up the path. Two characters dance for a protracted period. No sooner have they left the stage than the radio gives out. And what’s all that wheat doing in the kitchen? The set is one of those overly sophisticated designs which, rather than offering a subtle or subliminal information, keep you actively puzzling over how they’re supposed to work.
Some of this, of course, is the fault of the director, Patrick Mason—for example, the fact that the acting is so labored. We don’t need Rose to keep making village-idiot faces or Chris to keep reminding us, by gasping and leaping about, that she’s a breathless ingenue. The women are all playing various stereotypes, while Mr. Donnelly is playing a literary device rather than a person. Mr. McSorley seems to be enunciating for an audience of non-English speakers, and it takes you a long time to realize that Mr. Gwilym is playing a Welshman and not a mental defective.
It’s tedious watching desperate people who are resigned to their fate; what’s interesting is watching desperate people deceiving themselves. On the other hand, becoming resigned to desperation can be terribly interesting to read about, because it’s a process. I can’t help thinking that “Dancing at Lughnasa” would have made a beautiful short story or novella. The narrative bits—where Michael addresses the audience directly—are where all the good writing is. They’re also the only place where any authentic voice comes across. And if you’re telling a story—one that’s gripping on its own terms—you don’t have to cram in a lot of literary stuffing.
Mimi Kramer
The New Yorker, November 11, 1991