Sydney Reviews

Tell you why I do like Mundys. Five good reasons.

Five spinster sisters, Maggie, Agnes, Kate, Chis and Rose Mundy, living together with Michael, the illegitimate son of Chris, are grand company. These wonderful women form the nucleus of Brian Friel’s Dancing At Lughnasa, a play rich in memory and ceremony.

The play begins ninety years ago in the summer of 1936 when they got their first wireless. They called it Lugh, after the old pagan god of the harvest.  His festival was Lughnasa, a time of music and dance, so the appellation is entirely appropriate for the appliance that delivers music and prompts dancing. That same year the sister’s brother, Jack came home from Africa for the first time in twenty-five years. He was the oldest in the family, and the only boy. He had been ministering to the lepers in Uganda and has come home with malarial memory loss and a penchant for pagan ritual. Also making a return after a seven-year absence is Michael’s father, Gerry, gramophone salesman smooched by the Blarney stone, a flimflam fantasist beguiling to both Chris and Agnes, reviled by Kate, tolerated by Maggie and Rose.

A gifted embroider of words, Friel combines soft lyricism and hard meaning in his play, a tragical comical historical pastoral on a spree and spoiling for a spirited spar, a sparring given sinuous punch by an excellent ensemble.

Megan Bennetts as Maggie Mundy, exudes an exuberance and unashamed pragmatism and earthiness as strong as the Wild Woodbine she savours. In vivid contrast, Marisa-Clare Hissey as Kate, presents an uptight stitched-up schoolmarm, pious defender of the faith against pagan idolatry and Christian doctrine impropriety.

Audrey Blyde as Agnes textures her role with a simmering melancholy, supportive of her siblings and the domestic dynamic while quietly nurturing a gestating defiance and suppressing a longing for Chris’s lover, Gerry. Iris Simpson as Chris, delightfully balances the emotional roundabout of devoted, disciplined mother of Michael with the giddily, gloriously and vigorously falling in love again with the irresponsible Gerry. Tenielle Thompson as Rose doesn't know her Uganda from her Abyssinia, displaying a joy and innocence accompanied by an endearing naivete and robust resilience.

Equally astute as this inspired female company are the three males, Patrick Holman as Michael Evans, the play’s nostalgia nuanced narrator, Sebastian Gray as Gerry Evans, show-off seducer of Chris, father of Michael, brim full of blarney, and James Sugrue as Father Jack, delivering a nicely defined confusion mixed with an excitement and enthusiasm for his new found unfiltered faith.

Director Isabella Milkovitsch delivers a seamlessly spontaneous, communal achievement, marshalling a marvellous cast and team of creatives including choreographer Avalon Ormiston and costume designer Lily Moody who brings a distinguished dash to aprons, overalls, pullovers, skirts and work boots.

Set Designer Max Shaw has conjured a splendid construction of symbolic and practical, giving visual verisimilitude to Michael’s statement “When I cast my mind back to that summer of 1936, different kinds of memories offer themselves to me.” On this striking set, lighting designer Paris Bell creates mood and nuance, of revelry and reverie, simplicity and ceremony.

Love it more than chocolate biscuits!