“Pagan” or Sublime?
When the curtain rises on Brian Friel’s renowned play, “Dancing at Lughnasa,” Michael, a pleasant young man, addresses the audience as though he’s lying on an analyst’s couch: “When I cast my mind back to that summer of 1936, different kinds of memories offer themselves to me.” He was only seven, but the memories still make him “uneasy;” it was a time of “things changing too quickly.” These memories unfold for us on the stage.