Dancing At Lughnasa

“And when I cast my mind back to that summer of 1936, these two memories—of our first wireless and of Father Jack’s return—are always linked.” 

In this opening monologue from the adult Michael Evans, he implies a metaphorical link between the Marconi radio and his Uncle Jack. With its sputtering, irregular music, the Marconi evokes Jack’s experience of equally sputtering memory, as he attempts to understand where he is and to decipher English words from Swahili. The Marconi also serves as a stand-in for Jack’s pagan Ugandan beliefs, inciting the sisters to wild, decidedly un-Catholic fits of dancing.

“And when I remember the kitchen throbbing with the beat of Irish dance music beamed to us all the way from Dublin, and my mother and her sisters suddenly catching hands and dancing a spontaneous step-dance and laughing—screaming!—like excited schoolgirls, at the same time I see that forlorn figure of Father Jack shuffling from room to room searching for something but couldn’t remember what. And even though I was only a child of seven at the time I know I had a sense of unease, some awareness of a widening breach between what seemed to be and what was…” 

Continuing his opening monologue, Michael Evans establishes the tone of simultaneous nostalgia and unease that defines this memory play. The surreal—yet very real—images of Michael’s mother and sisters “screaming” and Father Jack “shuffling from room to room” evoke a tension between “what seemed to be and what was,” creating the sensation that these strange moments felt like “memories” even as they were occurring. The exploration of sensory memory continues to be a prominent theme throughout the play.