The National Theatre: Dancing at Lughnasa

Monday night, around 7:00pm (2:00pm Eastern Time, the time difference is still mind-blowing), our full group gathered at the National Theatre to see Dancing at Lughnasa by Brian Friel. I was particularly excited about seeing this play as a part of our ten full-class art events as soon as I heard about the venue and the playwright! 

The National Theatre is a huge building with three performance spaces that we learned about in class Monday morning, and Dancing at Lughnasa was in the Olivier Theatre. The building itself has a Brutalist architectural style with large windows integrated into the design (similar to our own Umble Center as Amy pointed out!). I first learned about the National Theatre during the pandemic, when they made full-length recordings of past shows available for free on YouTube for short amounts of time. I loved watching A Streetcar Named Desire and Frankenstein in 2020, so I was ecstatic to see a show in person at the theatre!

The playwright,Brian Friel also wrote a play called Translations, which a few of us read for our World Literature class this past spring (thanks Peter Miller!) Translations focused on the importance of language in Ireland as town names became Anglicized in 1833. Dancing at Lughnasa is set about a century later in the 1930s and follows a young man’s memory of his family, primarily his mother and his 4 aunts. The play depicts how dancing facilitates connection beyond differences and beyond language. My favorite moment was when the sisters shamelessly danced to the music from their small broken radio. Even when one sister tried to resist, the joy was far too great to contain. All five joined hands, skipped around, and even jumped on the table. Seeing them push aside everything they were stressed about in order to dance wildly and freely was so beautiful I felt like crying! It was definitely a wonderful evening!