Dancing At Lughnasa

Dancing at Lughnasa is a memory play narrated retrospectively by Michael Munday. It is 1936 and seven year old Michael lives with his mother Christina and her four, impoverished, spinster sisters in Ballybeg, County Donegal. Eldest sister Kate is a teacher at the local Catholic school and the only wage earner. Maggie keeps house and Agnes and Rose eke out a paltry existence knitting gloves for the local market. Michael's Uncle Jack has returned to Ireland having spent 25 years working as a missionary in a leper colony in a village in Uganda. Life in Ballybeg is harmonious and predictable.

We meet the Mundys around the time of the magical festival of Lughnasa, the celebration of the pagan god Lugh, the season of harvest, hope, and possible reward; a time to embrace the old rituals with wild abandon, dance in the back hills of Ballybeg and to find the possibility of love. The sisters are torn between their need for order and stability and the equally strong desire for the exhilaration of the dance. Will there be a bitter harvest for the Mundy sisters, a time to reap what they have sown?