Dancing at Lughnasa

Brian Friel paints a beautifully detailed portrait of life for five sisters during a momentous August in 1936 in his memory play "Dancing at Lughnasa," which focuses not only on the mundane aspects of the women's lives (the gossip they share and their daily routines) but also on the ways in which a rapidly changing world is encroaching on the simplicity they have known. And while director Charlotte Moore's straightforward production captures the innocence and joyous spirit of the play, it never fully brings the work's darker elements into focus.

At the center of the show are two exceptional performances, from Orlagh Cassidy, who plays schoolteacher Kate, the eldest of the sisters, and Aedín Moloney, who plays the mentally challenged Rose, the next-to-youngest of the women. Cassidy captures all of Kate's persnickety and demanding ways, which can cause her siblings to bristle, even as she reveals the warmth and tenderness that lie underneath the character's stern exterior, particularly in scenes with sister Maggie (the jocular Jo Kinsella). Similarly, Moloney brings a quiet dignity to her performance, making Rose a young woman of confused but nonetheless surging passions.

And while an assignation that Rose has with a married man carries some dramatic weight late in the play, and Kate's fussy ministrations to Uncle Jack (played solidly by Michael Countryman), a Catholic missionary who has returned from Uganda with some unconventional notions, also give the play a certain forward motion, it's the arrival of Gerry (played with forced sunniness by Kevin Collins), the Welshman who's fathered a son by another of the sisters, Chris (the charming Annabel Hägg), that gives the work its central—albeit understated—conflict.

Gerry's presence stirs feelings in both Chris and her sister Agnes (Rachel Pickup), who carries a torch for this man who has come to announce that he's joining the International Brigade and leaving to fight the war in Spain. And while some playwrights might use Gerry's arrival to spark confrontation, Friel simply allows the audience to see the depth of Agnes' feelings during a dance (choreographed by Barry McNabb) they share, as well as Chris' jealousy as she watches the two.

Gerry's decision, the central position of the new radio in the family home, and word of a new factory that ultimately robs Agnes and Rose of their livelihoods—as well as the bohemian ideas that Jack has brought back from Africa—should cast shadows over the action, but in Moore's staging they seem to be curiously commonplace. Even the revelation of certain sad details about the women's lives in the show's narration, delivered by Chris' son Michael (an almost brutally unsentimental Ciarán O'Reilly), who looks back from an adult perspective on the action he witnessed as a boy, fails to startle. Moore's production certainly beguiles, but it's never moving.
 
Presented by and at the Irish Repertory Theatre, 132 W. 22nd St., NYC. Oct. 30–Jan. 29. Wed.–Sat., 8 p.m.; Wed., Sat., and Sun., 3 p.m. (No performance Thu., Nov. 24; additional performance Fri., Nov. 25, 3 p.m.) (212) 727-2737 or www.irishrep.org.
Casting by Deborah Brown.