It has been an extraordinary season at Dramaworks and as the
personable Resident Director of the company, J. Barry Lewis, said at the
"Knowledge and Nibbles" session before last night's preview
performance of Brian Friel's best known play (he's written 36!) Dancing at Lughnasa, they wanted to end
the season with an explanation point.
The season began with Talley's
Folly, a sensitive, delicate two person play about injured lives and it
concludes with this eight person production, with much of the focus on five
unmarried sisters, but still about injured lives, an ensemble production
narrated by Michael, the adult child of two of the play's characters, Chris and
Gerry (although we never see Michael as a child on the stage). As a "memory play" we spend time in
the past to understand the present. And as an ensemble, there is no real
central character, but that of the family unit and how these people come
together and relate to each other in their own special ways.
The overriding themes are dreams foregone, and the old world
coming into conflict with new world values, such as the Catholic church losing its
grip in the face of rising secular activities, like music and dancing. The production is a veritable time machine
trip, all layers of the play bringing you to the village of Ballybeg, Country
Donegal, Ireland in 1936.
The play also carries forth a recurring theme in Irish
theater, suffering, tragic women, and men who are free to drift in and out of
their lives. I think of Martin McDonagh's The
Beauty Queen of Leenane (performed by Dramaworks last season) and some of
the works of Sean O'Casey which explored similar themes.
Gerry, Michael's father, visits once a year, with dreams of
being a great gramophone salesman, or an adventurer in the Spanish Civil
war. The Uncle, Father Jack, has
returned from Uganda where he was a missionary but has returned ill, and has been
transformed into a pagan worshiper, very much in conflict with the values of
his sister, Kate, who, of the five sisters, still staunchly upholds Catholic
traditions. The women are the ones who keep the family going, do the work and
have to carry on in the face of adversity, the changing times of the industrial
revolution that threaten their meager income (Kate is a school teacher whose
income is supplemented by two of her sister's -- Rose and Agnes -- work as
piecemeal knitters).
Theirs are dreams constantly deferred but Friel
introduces the interesting conceit of an unpredictable wireless radio, one that will occasionally
work, and it is then the women can burst into dance, from which the play
derives its title after an Irish pagan dance festival. They dance fast and furiously and passionately,
with one another and singularly, a sudden, powerful geyser of normally suppressed
sexuality and freedom, with animal like cries of joy, but as strangely as this
music comes into their lives it fades away and it is back to their mundane
lives. The "magic" of the radio -- clearly remembered by Michael with
the nickname of Marconi -- opened the outside world to this family for the
first time.
Friel uses the stage as a canvas to paint an abstract of
family dynamics of the times, ones that mirrored his own life and clearly this
is why the play works. Michael is the playwright's voice: "atmosphere
is more real than incident." And in order for it to work, the setting must also
be perfect and the scenic design by Jeff Modereger has created a startlingly
stark depiction of the family's threadbare home and its outside yard, using the
full expanse of the stage and compensating for the stage's lack of depth. It is a stage the actors can move freely
about without opening and closing doors.
The challenge to the actors who play the sisters is to capture the specific individuality
of the different sister relationships.
As an ensemble production, the audience needs to get to know each character on
his/her own merits, and follow that person's own solitary story.
Kate is the default mother of the family, a schoolteacher
and as such the main provider. She is also the upholder of tradition and the
values of the Catholic Church (although she, too succumbs to some dancing, but
not with wild abandonment). Julie Rowe, who is new to Dramaworks, but not South
Florida, plays the role with stoic determination.
She, as are all of the sisters, is protective of Rose,
played by Erin Joy Schmidt. Rose is a
little slow witted, innocent, and is the first to get caught up in the
excitement and dreams of attending the upcoming harvest dance (which they
don't). Ms. Schmidt -- who co starred in Talley's Folly at the beginning of the season, carries the role
with a kind of gullibility and she, of all the sisters, is most transparent to
the damage they all feel.
A veteran Dramaworks actor, Margery Lowe, plays Agnes, who
takes a special interest in protecting Rose.
The two of them knit to supplement Kate's income and they are the ones
who become most vulnerable when a factory opens nearby. This is a difficult role, well acted by Ms.
Lowe, as Agnes in many ways is the most repressed of the sisters, secretly in
love with Chris' Gerry, but never able to reveal anything.
Chris is played by Gretchen Porro, a Dramaworks newcomer
who, when with Gerry, becomes almost manic, a schoolgirl in love, and without
him, depressive, a "bad woman" as she has an illegitimate child (but, nonetheless, a love child as the pagan convert
Father Jack refers to him). It is another
difficult role to play (there are really no easy ones) and we hope to see Ms.
Porro in another production.
Meghan Moroney plays Maggie, the homemaker and in many ways comes
closest to a central figure as a fun loving family go between, played with indomitable
optimism and energy by Ms. Moroney. But
her good nature is belied by regret too, occasionally singing with a beautiful
voice or humming the then popular song, Isle
of Capri. She is a powerful figure on stage and as Irish as a shamrock!
And Michael's father, Gerry (played by Dramaworks veteran Cliff
Burgess), who occasionally visits to see his son, re-romance his would-be-wife,
Chris, with a wink at Chris' sister, Agnes, is not immune to the power of the
music, cutting a Fred Astaire with both Chris and Agnes at times to the
refrains of Dancing in the Dark. Burgess
walks a line in this role, always erring on the side of likeability. You never
feel he is a heel in spite of his dreams of adventure, and his kaleidoscopic,
self-servicing visits. He embodies the freedom the women pursue, living in the
moment.
Our matriarchal Kate worries when her brother, Father Jack,
played by Dramaworks veteran John Leonard Thompson, returns from his missionary
work in Uganda, as he not only comes back sickly, with memory loss from
malaria, but as an admirer of pagan practices of the African people,
threatening the Mundy family's reputation -- and putting her Catholic values in
direct conflict. Thompson glides around
the stage like a gray ghost, dazed most of the time, but slowly getting it
together, near the end trading his symbolic British colonial hat for Gerry's
straw hat, before, Gerry, himself, sets out to find adventure in the Spanish-American
war.
The play opens and closes with two powerful, wonderfully written
monologues delivered by the adult son, Michael, who is sifting through his
memory to describe his childhood recollections.
If I dared, I'd repeat those here as they are just so beautiful,
delivered with the devotion of a loving son of this decimated family, by Declan
Mooney, another Dramaworks veteran. But
to reprint those (they can be found on the Web) is to reveal just too much of
the outcomes of these damaged characters.
In fact, there is a pervading
sadness emitted by the play. We too briefly get caught up in
the spontaneous dancing as a relief from the ennui of despair. And the play seems long, although Dramaworks' pacing felt right; nonetheless there is just
so, so much material to cover. J Barry
Lewis' direction was flawless, but, a two hour and thirty plus minute play
(with a 15 minute intermission) is a challenge to keep the audience engaged
when the plot is partially made up of vignettes of despondency.
A few words about the sound (Steve Shapiro), lighting (Ron
Burns), and costumes (Brian O'Keefe) -- all flawlessly in synch with the period
and the mood of the play. Again, "atmosphere is more real than incident."
It is here that the behind the scene technicians shine. (We were lucky enough
to sit with Brian at the luncheon before last night's performance and learned
that he sewed all the costumes in his studio on a plain old Singer! He
explained that the challenge in making the attire was not only to capture the
period, but the personality traits of each sister.) Kudos as well to Lynette Barkley, the
choreographer, and Gillian Lane-Plescia who was the dialect coach and helped to
make the production authentic on the one hand and intelligible to an American
audience as well (Ann saw the original cast from Ireland in their Broadway debut
when the play came to New York and was hardly able to understand what they were
saying most of the play!)
All in all, a satisfying conclusion to Dramaworks' 2012-13
season.
I can still hear Maggie singing....
`twas on the isle of
capri that I found her
Beneath the shade of
an old walnut tree
Oh, I can still see
the flow’rs bloomin’ round her
Where we met on the
isle of capri
She was as sweet as a
rose at the dawning
But somehow fate
hadn’t meant her for me
And though I sailed
with the tide in the morning
Still my heart’s on
the isle of capri
