Review: 'Dancing at Lughnasa' captures the music of memory

Lough Anna. In the Brian Friel play, Dancing a...Image via Wikipedia"t's been an Irish autumn on Seattle stages. Both Seattle Repertory Theatre and ACT Theatre have mounted plays from the heart of the Emerald Isle by lauded Irish dramatists.

But the gentle, rural Mundy sisters in Brian Friel's award-winning 'Dancing at Lughnasa' at the Rep are from a different planet, let alone another era, than the thick-as-planks, trigger-happy desperadoes in Martin McDonagh's 'The Lieutenant of Inishmore' (which just closed at ACT).

The Friel play (previously seen at the Rep in 1995) is a far more sentimental portrait of humble Irish country folk, yet a more intentionally realistic one, too. Director Sheila Daniels and her fine ensemble have given it a fond, wistful patina, with stabs of sharp anguish and fleeting exhilaration."
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