Dancing at Lughnasa by Irish Playwright Brian Friel was originally
produced in Ireland in 1990. In 1992 it was presented on Broadway,
winning a Tony Award for best drama.
It
is a memory play set in a small Irish village in the summer of 1936. The
narrator fondly remembers the five women who raised him, his mother and
four unmarried aunts, and the critical events of that summer – a
shifting economic landscape, the return of an elderly uncle and meeting
his father for the first time, a charming Welsh drifter who strolls up
the lane and sweeps his mother away in an elegant dance across the
fields. The story of the five Mundy sisters eking out their lives and
dancing to the music of a temperamental radio - their only link to the
romance and hope of the world at large that awakens long-buried desires,
vanishing dreams, and perhaps a last chance at happiness is a play for
lovers of language and anyone who has dared to follow their dreams.
Widely regarded as preeminent Irish playwright Brian Friel's
masterpiece, this poetic and heartwarming story was described by Time
magazine as "elegant and rueful" when it opened on Broadway in 1992.
That year it won the Tony Award, Outer Critics Circle Award and the New
York Drama Critics Award for Best Play.
