By Brian Friel
Directed by Josie Rourke
Set & Costume by Robert Jones
Composer Hannah Peel
The Olivier Theatre,
National Theatre, London
Saturday 29th April 2023, 14.00
CASTLouisa Harland – Agnes understudy Catriona Williams
Bláithín Mac Gabhann – Rose
Siobhán McSweeney – Maggie
Justine Mitchell- Kate
Ardal O’Hanlon – Jack
Alison Oliver – Chris
Tom Riley- Gerry
Tom Vaughan-Lawlor- Michael
We saw this lovely Brian Friel play in Belfast at The Lyric Theatre in 2015 (link to review). That also had a terrace to stand on during the interval. The Olivier Theatre inevitably has the most elaborate sets in the country. This is before the play. During the play hills and clouds were projected behind the hanging poles. This is one where the Lyric, Belfast couldn’t compete, but then Karen pointed out the attention to detail too. Beneath the Belfast sink in the kitchen, a small curtain replaces a cupboard door, hanging slightly slack. It’s probably cut from an old frock. This is exactly what she remembers in her grandparents rural house.
As with The Motive and The Cue the night before, the National Theatre has produced an excellent programme for the play, and as I’d bought both programmes together, I read it thoroughly before the play. It presents the background and the play’s basis on Friel’s memories of his mother and aunts back in 1936. It is heavily autobiographical. It also explains Lughnasa, an ancient Irish harvest festival, using Friel’s original 1990 programme note.
The play’s narrator, Michael, is Chrissie’s love-child (Jack’s word). As family research shows, in rural areas, harvest celebrations are a major time for conception. Lughnasa has pagan origins, and the theme of the play is Kate’s Catholic mistrust of the event, contrasting with Father Jack, who is returning after 25 years as a missionary in Uganda. Jack has become interested in ‘spiritual search’ rather than Catholicism and especially the ceremonies of the Africans he worked with. Jack has not said mass for years. We suspect that’s why the Bishop has had him sent back, that and the signs of senile dementia.
Quentin Letts 5 star review in The Sunday Times expresses joy that at last there’s a play at a major subsidised theatre with no gender or ethnicity switching, and no outside PC agenda to educate and enlighten the viewer. As he points out, maybe you’re not allowed to do that with Irish based drama. This is the board in the lobby:
Note:
contains … swearing and incidents of discriminatory language which some people may find upsetting …
The fact that the National Theatre felt obliged to put that notice up rather proves his point. Swearing? Bastard twice, and one or two Jesus Christ! There is reference to the people from the Back Hills (the more rural part of rural) as ‘tinkers.’ That’s a widely used term in Ireland. Maggie sings a song about the ‘gypsy’ in my soul. Gerry recounts a meeting with a three foot tall ‘midget.’ Is that discriminatory language? Or is it Jack telling tales of the tribe he ministered to in Uganda sacrificing goats and being polygamous? (Which is simply fact). Is it mention of Jack’s Ugandan ‘houseboy’ (which he corrects to ‘friend’)? None of it sounds remotely upsetting to me.
The play is narrated by Michael (Tom Vaughan-Lawlor) and with beautiful vocal clarity too. Michael was just seven in 1936. He stands as an adult in the background while his mother and aunts bend down to talk to his invisible seven-year old self, and he replies in his present day grown-up voice.
The five sisters are well differentiated. Siobhán McSweeney as Maggie is the comedy and singing lead, ever cheerful, ever ready for a dance or a song, displaying a very spritely heel for a larger lady too.
Then Justine Mitchell is Kate, the senior sister. She’s a schoolteacher, a devout Catholic, and also the breadwinner in the family. Justine Mitchell plays her as tight-lipped, ever judgmental. Bláithín Mac Gabhann is Rose, the youngest, and a touch simple. Chris (Alison Oliver) is the unmarried mother of Michael, and the absent Gerry is his father. Catriona Williams understudied Agnes on this performance, the next sister who has something of an unrequited crush on Gerry. If we had not been told she was an understudy we would never have known.
The play takes place in August and September 1936, starting around Lughnasa. The event is the return of Michael’s father, Gerry (Tom Riley), on a flying visit, the first in 13 months. Gerry is a happy fantasist, a great dancer, and totally unreliable. Ah, but Chris is still soft on him. Gerry makes promises he will never meet. He’s not Irish either. The plot says he’s from South Wales, but if so, he has reinvented himself as a Bertie Woosterish English cheeky chappie with an RP accent. I suppose with Richard Burton in the play the day before, we have another Welshman with an RP English accent.
One of the joys is seeing Ardal O’Hanlon, and not in his first role as a cleric. Perhaps it’s an unfortunate coincidence that the character is named after a different member of the Father Ted household, Father Jack rather than O’Hanlon’s Father Dougal. His shaky hand as he drank his tea was executed so well. Jack’s stories of Africa suit his style. No plot spoilers, but anyone would love his description of the life the four women might enjoy in Africa. At the end of Part One he dances slowly and gently, tapping two sticks together in an African rhythm.
The centre of Act one is when the sisters start dancing, and eventually even Kate joins in, solo, at the side. It was much longer and louder here than in Belfast and all the better for that. It is one of those terrific stage moments. Yes, your feet start tapping. Yes, you want to dance in the aisles.
In the second half, the music from ‘Marconi’ as they name their precious but unreliable wireless set is American standards, not the exciting Irish jigs of the first half. Maggie sings along. I remember that being explained in the Belfast programme- it is what people really listened to on the wireless in 1936. Several of the women get to dance with Gerry. The structure is unusual in that Michael tells you what happened to the sisters in later years before going back to a final scene.
I mentioned an issue in the Belfast review. Michael is seven in 1936, so born 1929. So when is he narrating as he talks about what the sisters did later in the 70s? In Belfast it puzzled me. It didn’t at all here, I just accepted it as ‘later.’ Tom Vaughan-Lawlor was such a convincing Michael.
As in Belfast, I was hoping for a curtain call jig at the end. It would not work – it would destroy the moving ending of the whole.
An excellent cast play their roles in a stunning stage set with perfect costumes for the era. The play itself is thought provoking and emotional. The Irish music is stirring. What more can you ask? Five stars.
*****
WHAT THE CRITICS SAID
5 star
Quentin Letts, The Sunday Times *****
Marianka Swain, London Theatre, *****
4 star
Arifa Akbar, The Guardian ****
Susannah Clapp, The Observer ****
Nick Curtis, Evening Standard ****
Andrzej Lukowski, Time Out ****
Sam Marlowe, The Stage ****
3 star
Domenic Cavendish, The Telegraph ***
LINKS ON THIS BLOG
DANCING AT LUGHNASA
Dancing at Lughnasa, Belfast Lyric Theatre, 2015
JOSIE ROURKE (DIRECTOR)
Much Ado About Nothing, Wyndhams, 2011
Coriolanus, NT Live 2014
JUSTINE MITCHELL
The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, Donmar, 2017
For Services Rendered, by W. Somerset Maugham, Chichester Minerva Theatre, 2015
Love for Love by Congreve, RSC 2015
Peter Viney's Blog 