GOING FOR BROGUE

Brian Friel writes buckets of language that we are invited to smear over our faces as we greedily savor the taste of words, like blueberries plucked from the bush of memory. If this is an obscure image, you will appreciate it more after seeing Dancing at Lughnasa, presented at Herberger Theater Center by Arizona Theatre Company.

Friel is currently in vogue on Broadway: His Philadelphia, Here I Come was recently revived, Translations will open soon and his latest, Molly Sweeney, is a sensation in London, already destined for next year’s Tony Award. Friel is the playwright of the moment, and Phoenix is not to be deprived, even if served a four-year-old leftover.

There is very little story in Dancing at Lughnasa. The playwright shares his childhood memories of one haunting summer and a harvest festival called Lughnasa. The adult narrator, Michael, recalls his unmarried mother and her four unmarried sisters in their rustic home.

His uncle Jack, a missionary to Uganda, has returned from Africa, where his spirit has been broken by unspecified traumas. Fascinated by the relationship between ritual and reality, Jack has been so deeply impressed by his tribal parishioners and their African culture that he has lost a grip on his own. Now he can barely remember even simple English words, as his devoted sisters minister to his health.

Jack’s return coincides with the acquisition of a battery-operated radio that delivers the throbbing rhythms of music broadcast from Dublin and brings insistent life into the dullness of the sisters’ routines. The play’s only action is the visit of Michael’s father, a ne’er-do-well named Gerry, who waltzes on to charm Christina–again–and get a glimpse of his son. In short, nothing much happens, but, oh, how these Irish folks can spin the blarney!

And there is that one dramatic metaphor that levitates the play into a rare stratosphere of intoxication. Within the repressed lives of these withered women, there lurks a passion of Bacchic power. When midway through the first act that inner power is released in an orgiastic surrender to the thrill of dancing, the metaphor whirls its way into one’s heart with a surge of empathy that is both ecstatic and awesome.

As a Tony voter, when I saw Dancing at Lughnasa in New York, I took a premature exit. The Irish accents on Broadway were thick enough to need subtitles. The central dramatic orgiastic dance had been unveiled, and the narrator had summarized the ultimate fate of each character before the first-act curtain fell.

When Lughnasa beat out both August Wilson’s Two Trains Running and Terrence McNally’s Lips Together, Teeth Apart for both the Tony Award and the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award, I wondered just what I had missed in the second act. The good news is that the ATC production is far more accessible than its Broadway counterpart, partly because the Irish accents are served as a flavor rather than as an entree. I could actually understand most of what was said, which certainly adds to the enjoyment. Not much happens in the second act, but this play isn’t about what happens onstage, but rather what happens to the audience as we become inebriated by the heady poetry of the author. Eventually, we sense that the author finds himself imprisoned by his own dependence on words, and we experience his wonder at the power of raw emotion contained in wordless rituals, in ceremony, in dance. We understand a subtle connection between African culture and Irish ritual, dramatized by the ancient mystical sacrifice that characterizes the time of Lughnasa. By the time a white cock is killed by a fox near the end, by the time one character has smeared those symbolic berries on her face, by the time we know sisters Agnes and Rose will die many years later, homeless and alcoholic in London, our spirits have been enlarged enough to embrace the imagery and to receive the mysterious resonance with respect and awe.

Arizona Theatre Company’s Dancing at Lughnasa is uniformly well-acted. In New York, I couldn’t quite delineate the identities of the five very similar unmarried sisters. But here, five fine actresses deliver five memorable characters who will entertain and move you. Michäle Marsh, Deborah Van Valkenburgh, Michele Farr and Corliss Preston make up this remarkable ensemble, which surrounds the sensitive Jessica Knoblauch as Michael’s mother, Chris.

In particular, the Phoenix production benefits from Lawrence Hecht’s modest reading in the role of Michael, who acts as the narrator through whom the author recalls the experiences of his childhood. Charles Lanyer is effective as Jack, and Charles Shaw Robinson is light on his feet as the rogue Gerry.

The setting by R. Michael Miller is likewise more focused and dignified than the chaotic wheat fields that crowded the Broadway action. Unfortunately, when the lights reveal Miller’s swirling backdrop, it bears a disconcerting resemblance to a sphincter in the sky.

Matthew Wiener has done well in creating a full-bodied ensemble with rich characterizations, and his production is at its best when Jim Corti’s choreography takes over and rocks the stage with explosive dancing. Wiener is not very successful at keeping things going when two scenes occur simultaneously (inside the house and in front of the house), and the final moment is far better in the conception than in the clumsy execution.

Still, the second act does elevate the spirit and sends the audience out wiser and richer, with shimmering images that will linger in memory.

Marshall W. Mason has won six Obie Awards for directing work by playwrights Tennessee Williams, Lanford Wilson and Jules Feiffer. He is now associate professor of theatre at Arizona State University.