DANCING AT LUGHNASA

“You leave convinced that this is one of Friel’s finest plays.”
Michael Billington, Guardian

Following Brian Friel’s award-winning play Translations performed at the Loft last year to great acclaim, we are now staging his greatly loved 1990 play Dancing at Lughnasa.

This semi-autobiographical play, set in 1936 in the Ireland of his boyhood, features five unmarried sisters based on his mother and aunts.

It is Harvest time in County Donegal, 1936.

Outside the village of Ballybeg, the five Mundy sisters battle poverty to raise seven-year-old Michael and care for their brother, ‘Uncle’ Jack.

During the Festival of Lughnasa, Pagans and Christians meet and collide. The sisters fight each other, love each other, dance together, yearn and survive.

Brian Friel’s Olivier Award-winning play, most recently performed in a revival at The National Theatre in 2023, is an astonishing evocation of a family’s world on the brink of change.

Friel’s artful blend of nothing and everything happening at once is finely calibrated here. Brian Friel is one of the finest writers and this is a showcase for his skill.  We love to bring his work to the Loft stage.