Dancing at Lughnasa — a beautiful new staging of Brian Friel’s play at the National Theatre

Dancing at Lughnasa

National Theatre (olivier), London

The National Theatre’s beautiful new staging of Dancing at Lughnasa opens with a literal trip down memory lane. Tom Vaughan-Lawlor, playing Michael, the adult narrator whose reminiscences of childhood frame the action, wanders down the winding path that bisects Robert Jones’s evocative set. It is this path in rural Ireland that brings him to the small cottage he shared with his mother and four aunts in the summer of 1936.

Fields of ripe corn stretch away into the distance on the huge Olivier stage to meet a postcard vista of mountains, while a thin curtain encircles the back of the space. Characters part it as they enter, as if drawing aside the veil between present and past. Centre stage are the women, restored by the power of memory and art to life and vigour, defiantly vibrant in the face of poverty, propriety and prejudice.

Brian Friel’s tender 1990 play, one of his greatest, is set, like many of his dramas, near the fictitious town of Ballybeg (Baile Beag — “small town” in Irish) in Donegal. And like so much of his work, it anchors far-reaching questions about identity — both national and personal — and about writing, narrative and memory in a small, vividly drawn community. There are echoes of Chekhov, Tennessee Williams and Lorca, but it also bears Friel’s own unmistakable mix of mischief, depth and sense of place.

At its heart are the five Mundy sisters, inspired by Friel’s own mother and aunts and brought to life with great nuance and warmth in Josie Rourke’s deft, loving production. There’s Kate, the schoolteacher and breadwinner, whose briskness in Justine Mitchell’s performance masks an aching loneliness; there’s Maggie, the joker, played with wonderful richness and quiet longing by Siobhán McSweeney; there’s Louisa Harland’s reflective and watchful Agnes; there’s Bláithín Mac Gabhann’s impulsive and mentally fragile Rose. And there’s Christina, Michael’s sweet-natured mother, who still holds a candle for his drifter father, Gerry (Tom Riley), and who, in Alison Oliver’s luminous performance, lights up like a lantern when he wanders back into their lives.

They bustle about, feeding chickens, folding laundry, joking, and fussing over seven-year-old Michael as he constructs kites in the yard, and over their brother Jack (Ardal O’Hanlon), who has returned, confused, from a missionary posting. Rourke’s production is beautifully pitched: even as the women tease and bicker, and coax music out of their erratic new wireless, there’s a shadow of sadness to it. We sense that this sweltering harvest time is on the cusp of something, that memory is holding it up as something both cherished and perished.

Sure enough, adult Michael informs us that Jack’s conduct in Africa (“going native”, the Catholic church calls it) has brought disapproval on the whole family. The household will break up under the pressures of that and of industrialisation — none of the sisters will marry; two will die destitute. Their hopes, like Michael’s kites, will never fly. The tension between these facts and the vibrancy of the individuals we see on stage drive this bittersweet drama.

Dance (gorgeously choreographed by Wayne McGregor) becomes a leitmotif. It suffuses the play — whether it’s the sisters’ wild burst of abandoned joy when the radio flickers into life, Christina and Gerry’s intimate spin around the garden, or the gentle swaying of the sisters to some unheard rhythm as the play ends. Dance speaks of an older religion (the play is set at Lughnasa, the pagan harvest festival), but also of the internal lives of the women, deeper and richer than the narrow confines into which they have been pressed, but honoured through the licence of memory and art.

★★★★☆

To May 27, nationaltheatre.org.uk

The Secret Life of Bees

Almeida Theatre, London

There’s a glorious outburst of dance and song too at the heart of The Secret Life of Bees, and again it stands as a defiant female rejection of repression and restriction. In this 2019 musical, however, we are in the Southern states of the US in 1964. The Civil Rights Act has brought in new rights and freedoms for African Americans, but also fresh dangers as white supremacists vent their fury.

Drawn from Sue Monk Kidd’s 2001 novel, with a script by Lynn Nottage, music by Duncan Sheik and lyrics by Susan Birkenhead, it’s a timely, knotty story following two women on the run. White teenager Lily and her family’s black housekeeper Rosaleen flee their lives in South Carolina: Lily from her sadistic redneck father; Rosaleen from the vicious racism that has thwarted her plans to vote. Their destination is inspired by a postcard sent by Lily’s deceased mother. What they find is a honey farm, run by a group of black sisters whose independence and business savoir-faire are accompanied by deep spiritual commitment to a carving of a black Madonna and the freedom for which she stands.

Whitney White’s eloquent staging, often bathed in honey-coloured light by Neil Austin, is marked by radiant performances — particularly from Rachel John as the matriarch who runs the farm, Abiona Omonua as the careworn, kindly Rosaleen and Eleanor Worthington-Cox as Lily — and by uplifting song. There are also two contrasting romances: the ever-patient Neil (Tarinn Callender), whose regular proposals to June (Ava Brennan) become sweetly funny, and the mutual attraction between Lily and fellow honey collector Zachary (Noah Thomas), crushed by racial prejudice.

The show is bumpy, however. Characterisation is slender, several plot twists feel abrupt and there’s a sense of packing too much into a pint pot. What raises it up is the blazing sense of solidarity and empowerment that pours off the stage in rousing, gospel-inflected anthems such as “Our Lady of Chains”. And when the women sing the spine-tingling, a cappella “Hold This House Together”, they seem to be commenting on far more than the 1960s.

★★★★☆

To May 27, almeida.co.uk

Ain’t Too Proud

Prince Edward Theatre, London

Still in 1960s America, from the mighty hit factory Motown comes a group with smooth music and even smoother moves. The Temptations are the latest pop legends to get the jukebox treatment in Ain’t Too Proud, a show bubbling with brilliant performances but labouring with a thinly written book. Original band member Otis Williams (Sifiso Mazibuko) is our narrator, whisking us through an eventful history and joining the dots between episodes of dramatisation.

We see the early attempts to break through, the drawbacks of fame, the struggles with drugs, relationships, illness and prejudice. There’s also the temptation of what Williams describes as the “biggest drug of all” — the spotlight — as stardom and equal billing fight it out.

But by packing so much in, the script has no time for proper detail; the women in the story get particularly short shrift (the show honours the strains Williams’s touring put on his wife, Josephine, but you’d be hard-pressed to say what she was actually like). The staging is smart, however. There are witty touches to Des McAnuff’s pin-sharp direction (departing band members zip off on a conveyor belt) and some clever match-ups of song to story. Tosh Wanogho-Maud and Mitchell Zhangazha are terrific and charismatic as David Ruffin and Eddie Kendricks. And not in doubt is the cast’s scintillating delivery of dazzling dance moves (choreographed by Sergio Trujillo) and those irresistible songs.

★★★☆☆

To October 1, london.ainttooproudmusical.com