Dancing at Lughnasa

This quiet memory play is set in Ireland in the 1930s. I might as well admit that I’m a sucker for the script, since it touches on many things close to my heart: family life in a rural village, cantankerous old shortwave radios with glowing tubes and dials that magically bring in music from overseas, and the darkly seductive atmosphere of the Celtic Twilight, in which it’s somehow possible to be devoutly Catholic and yet also participate in the autumn festival dedicated to the old pagan spirit known as Lugh.The story is told through a fond, yet gloomy, nostalgia, as the narrator—a boy of 7 at the time of the events in the play—looks back after the passage of 25 years, with the realization that the happy times we’re seeing on stage were about to come to a painful end. It’s a nifty device.

The story concerns five women—with no prospect of a husband in sight—making due as they move further and further past the usual age for marriage. Another relative in the household is an old missionary priest, returned to Ireland after long service in Africa, where he became more interested in his parishioners’ tribal beliefs than in spreading Christianity. Lastly, there’s a ne’er-do-well boyfriend, all charm and no ability, who wafts through the play as an appealing temptation.

This production by Main Street Theatre Works in Sutter Creek features some worthy resources in the cast—beautiful Janice Jones as the unwed mother Chris; feisty Sandra McCord as the cigarette-puffing, boot-wearing Maggie; and Sue Haldane as the devout, dutiful Kate (determined to hold the household together, but feeling the strain).

But the show doesn’t entirely come together. Some of the Irish accents are a little too variable, and some lines felt rushed; a few of the many kitchen table scenes lack credibility in terms of family dynamics. More important, the delicate gauze of melancholy reflection—so important in this script—comes and goes.

Even if it’s only intermittently successful, this friendly show represents an honest and well-intended effort (rather than a significant miscalculation) by Main Street Theatre Works. And be sure to save the recipe for Irish Soda Bread, printed in the playbill.—