Dancing at Lughnasa
Crucible Theatre, Sheffield. Wednesday 18th September 2025
The Crucible Theatre commences its new season with a production of Brian Friel’s 1990 play Dancing at Lughnasa. Inspired by his own childhood in Ireland, the play was a huge success for Friel, attracting both a Tony and Olivier award for Best Play. It later transferred to the big screen with a star-studded cast headlined by Meryl Streep and Michael Gambon.
Set in 1936 around the time of the Celtic festival of Lughnasa, the action takes place in and around the house of the Mundy family, consisting of five unmarried sisters, an older brother and a young boy named Michael. Although unseen onstage as a boy, the older Michael (played by Kwaku Fortune) stands mostly outside of the action as the narrator of the piece.
Head of the household is the matriarchal and strait-laced Kate (Natalie Radmall-Quirke). A devout Catholic and schoolmistress, Kate is the only member of the family to earn a decent living. Maggie (Siobhán O’Kelly) is the main homemaker and joker of the family with a wild streak and penchant for smoking the odd ‘Wild Woodbine’. Agnes (Laura Pyper) is the quietest of the sisters who along with Rose (Rachel O’Connell) makes hand knitted gloves to sell, contributing to the Mundys’ meagre coffers. Rose has a developmental disability, and Agnes often assumes the role of her protector.
The final sister is Michael’s mother Chris (Martha Dunlea) who lights up whenever Michael’s wayward father Gerry (Marcus Rutherford) is on the scene, only to fall into a deep depression when he disappears again for months at a time. The women’s simple lives are punctuated with a shared passion for wild and carefree dancing, with accompaniment provided by an unreliable wireless called Marconi.
At the start of the play, the sisters’ older brother Jack (Frank Laverty), a priest and former missionary in Uganda, has returned to the family home. It appears at first that having contracted malaria and lost most of his mental faculties he has returned home due to ill health. However, when his condition improves and lucidity returns, we learn how Jack has all but lost his Catholic faith and talks of his love of the pagan rites and rituals he has experienced, much to the horror of sister Kate. In time Jack’s lapsed faith threatens Kate’s career as the changing world around them undermines the stability of the entire family.
With themes of missed opportunities and modern ways challenging traditional values, Dancing at Lughnasa is reminiscent of Chekhov’s Three Sisters. The gentle life of the Mundy family conceals a vast undercurrent of feeling which, in the hands of less skilled performers, could be dull. Thankfully the talented ensemble creates a collection of mostly engaging and believable characters. The interplay of the Mundy sisters is the heart of this play, and each one of them is portrayed with precision and beautiful individuality by a quintet of accomplished actors. Through monologues each in turn gradually reveals the frustrations of their inner world as the outer world begins to rock the foundations of their existence.
As Michael, Fortune narrates with an assured presence. Lavery conveys Jack’s journey of recovery convincingly and the unease he creates in Maggie and Kate when describing his pagan experiences in Africa is palpable. Rutherford however doesn’t quite capture the charm expected of Welshman Gerry that is meant to turn the heads of both Chris and Agnes, and his accent is hard to place.
Dancing at Lughnasa is directed by Elizabeth Newman in her first production as the Crucible’s new Artistic Director. Clever use is made of an exquisite open set designed by Francis O’Connor that blur the edges between the Mundy’s flagstone floored kitchen and the fields and blue skies of County Donegal. Although the slow-pace of the writing will not appeal to all, the result is a warm, tender and honest reflection of a time long past.
