Dancing At Lughnasa

To celebrate their 50th. anniversary, Donegal Drama Circle have selected Dancing at Lughnasa, one of Brian Friel’s most successful plays. Set at harvest time in 1930s Donegal, we meet the five Mundy sisters – schoolteacher and matriarch Kate, Maggie, Christina, Agnes and Rose – as they struggle to make ends meet and care for their seven-year-old nephew and their brother Jack, who has returned from the African missions in a somewhat confused state. The play is loosely based on the lives of Friel’s own mother and his aunts who lived at The Laurels, close by the old Glenties Railway Station. The Laurels house and gardens have been recently restored by The Brian Friel Trust and Donegal County Council.

First produced by the Abbey Theatre in 1990, with the great Rosaleen Lenihan as Kate Mundy, Dancing at Lughnasa later transferred to the West End where it won an Olivier Award and thereafter to Broadway, where it won a Tony Award. It was made into a successful film with Meryl Streep and Michael Gambon in 1998.

In this Donegal Drama Circle production, the part of Kate is played by Emer McMullin, Ciara Boyle is Agnes, Suzanne Thomas is Christina, Rhiannon Kerrigan is Maggie and Faye Gallagher is Rose. Conor Friery is Michael, Seamus McHugh is Father Jack and Ciaran Cassidy is Gerry Evans.