Friel’s award winning Dancing At Lughnasa opens at R & D

Set in rural Donegal in 1936 the play follows the five Mundy sisters as they laugh, cry and dance together sometimes through impossible hardness and poverty.

Their lives are changed during the course of a summer when their missionary brother returns from Africa a frail and changed man and the sisters get their first wireless radio. Relationships are tested, social conventions challenged and the doctrines of the church clash with the spirit of a Pagan past. Dreams of love crumble as dusk sets on the life the sisters knew.

Told through the eyes of seven-year old Michael, the illegitimate son of one of the sisters, this is a magical, moving, story filled with humour, tenderness and the longing of unfulfilled lives.

First performed at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin in 1990, the play transferred to London’s National Theatre the next year, winning the Olivier Award for Best Play and subsequently went to Broadway where it added the Tony Award for Best Play.

The film version, made in 1998, starred Meryl Streep as Kate Mundy.

The talented stage cast includes Milo Twomey, who starred in the hugely popular Brief Encounter, which Royal & Derngate co-produced with Kneehigh.

For tickets and information call the box office 01604 624811 or online at www.royalandderngate.co.uk.