Dancing at Lughnasa
by City Theatre Company

Mar. 15 - Mar. 31

Acclaimed Irish playwright Brian Friel takes us across the sea to a musical and mystical land as City Theatre Austin continues its 2024 season with the Tony-Award winning play Dancing at Lughnasa. 

 

                   Dancing with eyes half closed because to open them would break the spell. Dancing as if language no longer existed because words were no longer necessary… - Michael 

 

This extraordinary poetic drama is the story of five unmarried Irish sisters eking out their lives in a small village in 1936. Their spare existence is only interrupted by brief, colourful bursts of music and the overwhelming spell to dance that has the power to transcend their lonely lives and link them to the romance and hope of the outside world. When two unexpected visitors arrive, the past and present collide and begin to destroy the foundation of their family forever. Widely regarded as Friel’s masterpiece, Lughnasa is a haunting and poetic tribute to the spirit and valor of the past.

 

                 To remember everything is a form of madness. – Brian Friel

 

Review by Victoria Schwartz, Austin Broadway World, March 18, 2024

Brian Friel is the best-known Irish playwright of his generation. Often referred to as “Ireland’s Chekhov,” his major works include Philadelphia, Here I Come!, Molly Sweeney, and the critically acclaimed Faith Healer and Dancing at Lughnasa, which won the Olivier Award and three Tony Awards. Other honors include the Evening Standard Award for Best Play, the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Foreign Play, membership into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the British Royal Society of Literature, and induction into the American Theater Hall of Fame. His plays have been compared to those of contemporaries such as Samuel Beckett, Arthur Miller, Harold Pinter, and Tennessee Williams. The New York Times’s theater critic, Vincent Canby, spoke for many when he wrote that Mr. Friel has long been recognized as Ireland’s greatest dramatist, having “dazzled us with plays that speak in a language of unequaled poetic beauty and intensity.” In Friel’s literary career, he wrote twenty-four published plays, two short-story collections and eight published play adaptations. 

 

The Critics on Lughnasa:

“An exquisitely observed and delicately drawn miniature of a family’s final harvest before the scattering of the crops.” – Daily Mail

“There is no doubting we are in the thrall of as masterly a dramatist as the theatre possesses.” – The Times

 

The production is led by guest director Payton Trahan, who recently directed City Theatre’s summer 2023 production of Picnic, and features the cast of Charlie Bryan, Shanaya Dixon, Mikayla Hinds, Josie Hood, Moses Kutz, Cristina Pop, Scott Poppaw, and Catherine Woodiwiss. 

Celebrating its 18th Season, City Theatre is an Austin-based, not-for-profit arts organization and is sponsored in part by the Austin Creative Alliance and the Cultural Arts Division of the City of Austin. Founded in 2006, the company has been recognized by the Austin Critics Table Awards, the B. Iden Payne Awards, the Central Texas Excellence in Theatre Awards, BroadwayWorld Austin, Central Texas Live Theatre, and has twice been voted “Best Theatre Company” by Austin American-Statesman’s Austin 360. CTC is dedicated to providing a quality, reputable, and diverse public theatre and stage entertainment experience that is accessible to all artists and the entire Austin community. CTC continues to offer its student and group discount ticket program for any show. Put a little theatre in your life!

 

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Dancing at Lughnasa
by Brian Friel
City Theatre Company