'Dancing at Lughnasa,' College of Marin, through Oct. 21

Beth Deitchman plays Agnes and Marjorie Rose Taylor is Christina in
College of Marin's production of 'Dancing at Lughnasa.'
(Provided by College of Marin)

Danse macabre

By Mark Langton
IJ Correspondent

Article Launched: 10/10/2007 03:44:21 PM PDT

Tommy O'Neill, an old friend of mine who grew up in County Kilkenny, used to say that the key to understanding Ireland is to understand that it is a country made up of orphans and pagans.

"And that the orphan in us needs to weep," he said.

There is a scene that is at the heart of the wistful (if decidedly pagan) College of Marin production of Brian Friel's Tony Award-winning play, "Dancing at Lughnasa," COM's 2007/2008 season opener, which runs through Oct. 21 in the Fine Arts Theatre at COM's Kentfield campus. It's the scene where five unmarried sisters, recalling the dance of La Lughnasa, the harvest feast day celebration of the pagan god Lugh, spontaneously join hands and explode into a high-kicking, foot-stomping, spontaneous rite of exultation and release. It is an amazing scene, and, in the hands of award-winning director Molly Noble, it is a harrowing one.

For in Noble's riveting and stark interpretation, this is no slaphappy Ring Around the Rosy. Nor is it a mere expression of joy or all-too-facile "celebration of the human spirit."

Riverdance, it's not.

It begins with a strangled cry and erupts into a white cloud as the sisters slap and rub their faces with flour. And as their high-stepping circle dance spills out from the hearth into the yard, the women forget for a moment their Christian respectability and bleak, hardscrabble existence in a modest croft just outside of Ballybeg, a mythical village in County Donegal. For one brief moment, they toss up their hemlines, stamp their feet and give in to their desires, laughing, screaming and shrieking like a pack of wild banshees in a fierce, primitive, nearly tribal danse macabre.

"Dancing at Lughnasa" is a gorgeously poetic memory play, standing firmly in the tradition of memory theater epitomized by Tennessee Williams' "The Glass Menagerie." It is narrated through the eyes of Michael (Christopher Hammond), the grown, illegitimate son of Chris (Marjorie Rose Taylor), as he recalls for us the summer of 1936 when he was 6 and living with his mother and her four sisters in their small cottage in Donegal.

Michael's Uncle Jack (Dennis Crumley) has just returned from 25 years as a missionary with the lepers in Uganda and, in his current convalescence with his sisters, is drawn by distant drums back to the African culture he had come to love, turning away from the priesthood; hence, his prudish sister (played by Esther Mulligan, who brings a certain dignity and surprising vulnerability to the role) Kate's attempts to bring her rather damaged, malaria-ridden brother back to the "true faith." Mousy sister Agnes (in a thoughtful, subdued performance by the always interesting Beth Deitchman) is a quiet, watchful dreamer; Maggie (played by a delightful Candace Brown) is the wild joker of the brood; and Rose (sweetly played by Jessica Reisbord) is the simple-minded sister, whose dreams of romance are ever unfulfilled. Michael father, Gerry (Sean Gunnell), is a slick but still-charming Welsh salesman, a cad who only drops into his son's life when it suits him - and when he's not off chasing windmills.

"Lughnasa" works best when, in ensemble, the sisters display a mystical, almost telepathic communion, which is not consistently present in this cast. There are moments, however, which proved they worked hard in the attempt.

The good news is that this lack of ensemble cohesion calls more attention to individual performances, many of which were standouts Friday. Gerry, Michael's ne'er-do-well father, is perfectly cast with COM newcomer Sean Gunnell, who manages to make this bounder likable, despite the fact that the character possesses all the depth of a small wading pool. No doubt, much of the creative business that enlivens the role of Gerry is due, in part, to Noble's handiwork, and it does not go unnoticed.

Neither does the welcome return of Marjorie Rose Taylor to the Marin stage. Taylor has been well known to the North Bay community theater community as a precocious and dedicated trouper since she was 6. Taylor, who turned 20 in May, returns from two years of study at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in New York with a restrained and nuanced approach to the role of Chris, luminous in her scenes with Gunnell.

Less effective is Crumley's wayward priest, Jack. As he acts out his confusion over forgetting much of his vocabulary, he looks more like an actor who has forgotten his lines.

To succeed, this memory play requires a dreamlike, ghostly atmosphere that this production admirably achieves, thanks in part to the storybook set design of Ronald Krempetz and the preternatural light design of Deneb Irwin.

"Lughnasa," like Williams' "Menagerie," is described as a memory play, not so much because it is told in flashback, but because it is a lyrical exploration of memory itself. Where things are seen in memory's light, not real light, and where "atmosphere," says Michael, "is more real than incident," and gone missing are the history books the winners often burn.

For a memory play to succeed, it has to move us - and console us. And to do that, it must remind. It must remind us that even the darkest corners of our memories can stand to be held up to memory's light. That you don't have to be Irish to feel like a motherless child - or a pagan, for that matter. "We're all orphans in this world," my friend Tommy used to say, "dancing down the road to eternity ... consoling one another." Perhaps that's why this production succeeds as well as it does - it consoles us. It reminds us that the orphan in us needs to weep.

But more than that, it reminds us that the pagan in us needs to dance.

REVIEW

What: "Dancing at Lughnasa," by Brian Friel

Who: College of Marin Theatre Arts Department

Where: Fine Arts Theatre, Sir Francis Drake Boulevard at Laurel Avenue, Kentfield

When: Through Oct. 21; 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays

Tickets: $12 to $15

Information: 883-2211 or www.marin.cc.ca.us/ProgramDirectory/index.htm

Rating: Four out of five stars

Mark Langton can be reached at mark.langton@comcast.net.