Dancing at Lughnasa

Today we saw our first play of many – Dancing at Lughnasa at the National Theatre. This show definitely had it’s ups and downs.

Some of the things that I really enjoyed about the show were the technical aspects, I loved how deep / far back the set went. It made the set look bigger, less crowded, and the set designer had more room to design a world for the show without having a small restricting set space to deal with. The only part of the set that I have concern with is when Gerry is in the tree, I couldn’t tell if he was offstage yelling is lines or if he was onstage on a set piece that we couldn’t see because of our seats. I thought the lighting was good, I didn’t notice anything too special. The music when they were dancing was also fun.

I think that the actors did very well in their roles, so I have nothing against them. I think I really just didn’t like the script, I found it really hard to like this show. I didn’t like it when I read it in Fayetteville, frankly I found it boring to read because it felt like nothing happened the entire show. I went into the show today with an open mind hoping that I would like it, but I just didn’t. There were some moments of the show that made me laugh, but then it got really slow again. I think my favorite character / actor was Maggie. She was hilarious and I think without her I would have completely zoned out. The other characters were okay, but I don’t think I got much from them.

Overall, I am glad that I saw the show, but I don’t think that it is a show that I will ever want to see again or read the script for.