IRISH PLAY “DANCING
AT LUGHNASA”
COMING FOR ST. PATRICK’S DAY
Brian Friel’s play “Dancing at Lughnasa” will be performed at Broadview Heights
Spotlights this spring, running March 8-23.
This extraordinary play is the story of five
unmarried sisters eking out their lives in a small village
in Ireland in 1936. We meet them at the time of the festival
of Lughnasa, which celebrates the pagan god of the harvest
with drunken revelry and dancing. Their spare existence is
interrupted by brief, colorful bursts of music from the
radio, their only link to the romance and hope of the world
at large. The action of the play is told through the memory
of the illegitimate son of one of the sisters as he
remembers the five women who raised him: his mother and four
maiden aunts. He is only seven in 1936, the year his elderly
uncle, a priest, returns after serving for twenty-five years
as a missionary in a Ugandan leper colony. For the young
boy, two other disturbances occur that summer. The sisters
acquire their first radio, whose music transforms them from
correct Catholic women to shrieking, stomping banshees in
their own kitchen. And he meets his father for the first
time, a charming Welsh drifter who strolls up the lane and
sweeps his mother away in an elegant dance across the
fields. From these small events spring the cracks that
destroy the foundation of the family forever.
The Spotlights’ production is directed by Rose
Leininger, and features a cast including Elizabeth Allard,
Tara Corkery, Molly Cornwell, Khaki Hermann, Dan Hunsicker,
Kayleigh Joyce, Andrew Keller, and Bob McCoy. Other
production staff members include, Clorise Busch (Stage
Manager), Karen Johnston (Costumer), Tim Anderson (Technical
Director & Set Designer), Adam Bowers and Stephanie
Malfara (Co-Producers).
Performance dates are March 8 through March
23. Performances will occur on Friday and Saturday evenings
at 7:30 PM, and there will be a Sunday matinee on Sunday,
March 17 at 3:00 (the perfect show to celebrate St.
Patrick’s Day). All performances are held at the Broadview
Heights Cultural Arts Building, 9543 Broadview Road in
Broadview Heights (next to the police station).
Tickets are $15 for adults and $12 for seniors
and students. Tickets may be purchased on-line at www.broadview-heights-spotlights.org. The box office will be open ½ hour prior to
every show for in-person ticket sales. Note: The theater has
space for one wheel chair and the entire first row is on the
ground (other rows have 1-4 steps).
“Dancing at Lughnasa” is presented in a special arrangement with the
Dramatists Play Service.