Dramaturgical Packet.

 About Dancing at Lughnasa

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dancing at Lughnasa has become Brian Friel's most popular play written by far. Most interesting about this piece is that it is a memory play, told completely through the memories of the narrator, Michael, who is a young boy in the piece, but a grown man as the narrator. Michael takes us back to his childhood in the 1930's during the Harvest Festival of Lughnasa, when his family first acquires a new wireless set, which they name Marconi. The young boy tells us of the memory of his mother and her sisters dancing and letting loose to the musical sounds coming out of this new wireless set. Michael recalls being shocked by this action, because he sees his mother and sisters breaking the mold of the good Catholic woman as they continue to dance like animals. They dance a kind of harvest dance to this 1930's music, which becomes the high point of the play, because it is a spontaneous unleashing of the sexual impulses of the five sheltered women.  Once these sexual impulses have been released, they even suggest going down to dance at the town's Lughnasa Harvest Festival, at which the the eldest and most strict sister, Kate, turns up her nose. She even goes as far as to call her sisters pagans for even thinking of going to it. The most influential part of this high point of the play is that these sisters cannot  go on dancing in this happy moment forever. Therefore, as the grown up Michael tells us, this memory is a moment of happier times that could not be sustained. Friel wanted the tone of this play to be a bittersweet and nostalgic look at the past lives of the Mundy family, where there lived a single moment of bliss that could not be preserved. At the end, the blissful memories of the past are contrasted with sharp reality of the present, as Michael tells us of the sad death and fading away of the entire Mundy family (Pratt).