Jennifer Chung Klam

San Diego Arts

'Dancing at Lughnasa' at New Village Arts

... as if language no longer existed
By Jennifer Chung Klam
Posted on Mar 11 2008
Last updated Mar 12 2008

They say that 55% of communication is accomplished nonverbally – through body language, eye contact, facial gestures and movement. This is certainly true in Brian Friel’s “Dancing at Lughnasa.”

The Irish playwright’s atmospheric memory play, as capably presented by New Village Arts Theatre, relies on the actors’ ability to convey longing, joy, smoldering contempt, unquenched desire and painful realization through looks and gestures. Because not much really happens in the play. Which is not to say that there’s no drama – much of it just happens in that 55%.

And then there’s the dancing alluded to in the title.

Characters fall in love through dance. They connect through dance; they celebrate identity and culture through it. When the five Mundy sisters break out in spontaneous frenzied movement, brought on by the traditional Irish music issuing forth from the radio, it’s an expression of their pent-up sexual desire and hope in the face of daunting circumstances.

In many ways, all of the sisters are at a loss for words. They hold in their emotions, keep secrets from their neighbors and from each other, or even use chatter as a means to avoid having hearty discussions.

Charlie Riendeau (clockwise from left), Amanda Sitton,

Grace Delaney and Kristianne Kurner.

Photo: Brian Meagher

To emphasize Friel’s point about language, brother Jack Mundy has difficulty recalling English words, having spent the last 25 years living as a missionary in Africa. Ostensibly there to convert the natives to Catholicism, Jack (Charlie Riendeau, appropriately doddering and appealing) instead “went native” himself, and finds that expression comes easiest when banging two sticks together in some joyfully recalled Ugandan rhythm.

The Tony Award-winning play takes place toward the end of summer 1936, in a fictional, poor Irish town called Ballybeg. The Mundy family and the world as they know it is on the cusp of change – by play’s end we will discover the breakup of the family, the loss of their reputation, the death of their brother and the arrival of the Industrial Revolution in rural Ireland.

Michael, the illegitimate son of Chris Mundy (Amanda Sitton, warm and bright), narrates the story as he recalls those bittersweet days when he was just 7 years old. Two things resonate in his memory from this period: the return of his uncle Jack and the acquisition of a radio that works only intermittently. Joshua Everett Johnson, in a powerful yet understated role, reveals the story and also relives scenes with the boy’s mother and her sisters. On the verge of spinsterhood, the aunts dote on him, as he represents their unfulfilled yearning to marry and bear children.

It is during this summer that Michael also meets his father for the first time. An amiable drifter, Gerry (Manny Fernandes, not entirely believable as the charming scamp) has taken no responsibility for his son, and pops in unexpectedly to see his mother every couple of years, offering marriage to Chris and a bicycle to young Michael.

The sisters eagerly anticipate the festival of Lughansa, where they might dance with “drunk, dirty and sweaty” young men. The festival pays homage to the pagan god Lugh, celebrates the end of harvest and signals the coming of cooler weather. And like St. Patrick’s Day in America, it’s an excuse to engage in tomfoolery, dancing and drunken revelry. But Kate, a teacher and the family’s matriarch/breadwinner, will have none of it.

Played by Kristianne Kurner, she’s the classic schoolmarm – stern, priggish, and repressed. She’s a devout Catholic who views the radio as a vice that has “killed all Christian conversation” in the country. Her dances, done in private, are not the untamed, joyous jigs of her sisters but rather the stiff-armed, high-kicking traditional step dancing.

Grace Delaney gives a wonderful performance as the likeable and chatty Maggie. Amanda Morrow plays quiet Agnes, and PJ Anbey takes on the role of the slow and vulnerable Rose.

Wrapped up in all the uncommunicated meaning of Friel’s play are also bigger, weightier issues: the stifling atmosphere of the home; the repressive nature of rigid Catholicism; and the political and cultural shifts occurring in the broader world, elsewhere in Europe and America.

Mary Larson’s drab clothing aptly reflects the period and the social class, while Nick Fouch’s beautifully crafted set design opens the modest Mundy house up to the garden outside and suggests the Ballybeg countryside beyond. Sound design by Johnson includes traditional Irish music and American music of the ‘30s such as “Dancing in the Dark” and “Anything Goes.” Fluidly directed by Esther Emery, the play resides in moments of wordlessness – a squeal of delight, a severe look, a tentative touch.

Yet many of these moments could be delivered more delicately. It’s almost as if Emery and the cast don’t trust in their audience to pick up the nuances of the unspoken. At times the gestures became too unsubtle – blaring in like the suddenly on-again radio. Perhaps this will diminish as the run continues.

In the play, “atmosphere is more real than incident and everything is simultaneously actual and illusory,” as Michael says of his memories. Friel suggests that in the music, rituals and wordless ceremonies can be found other, more effective types of communication. The robust New Village Arts production goes a long way in demonstrating that.

About the author: Jennifer Chung Klam is an editor at The Daily Transcript and a freelance arts and culture writer.
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