Dancing At Lughnasa review: A humane play set in the 1930s

Narrated by the sisters’ now-adult nephew Michael (Tom Vaughan-Lawlor), it conjures a particular summer in which “atmosphere is more real than incident”.

Schoolteacher Kate (Justine Mitchell) is angular, starchy and responsible, Maggie (Siobhan McSweeney) is Woodbine-smoking and boisterous, caring Agnes (Louisa Harland) looks after the simple Rose (Blaithin Mac Gabhann) and Michael’s unmarried mother Chris (Alison Oliver) is pretty and vivacious.

When Michael’s feckless father Gerry (Tom Riley) arrives after a lengthy absence, Chris succumbs to his dubious charms once again.

As Jack’s memory starts to return, it becomes clear that he ‘went native’ in Africa and engaged in spiritual practices and rituals of which the Church disapproved – blood sacrifice usurped Holy Communion.

With thematic hints of fertility rituals, Christianity v Paganism and maladjusted memory, it is an intimate drama on a grand scale.

Robert Jones’s set fills the Olivier stage with a grass-lined hill through which a dusty path winds down to the sisters’ stone-flagged kitchen.

Their one comfort is a huge wireless set whose erratic operation provides much of the humour as well as the sequence when the women break into a spontaneous dance.

Choreographed by Wayne McGregor, it is the highlight of the play. The liberation of wild abandonment as they dance together is one of the most exhilarating scenes in 20th-century drama, rivalled only by the “juba” in August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come And Gone.

Director Josie Rourke orchestrates this rich, fertile and immensely humane play with a sure hand.

National Theatre until May 27 Tickets: 020 3989 5455

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