\96 - Wednesday, June 2974994 - North Shore News

wate

Dancing creates real memories onstage

Martin Millerchip
THEATRE REVIEW

Dancing At Lughnasa by Brian
Friel, directed by Sherry Bie. At
the Arts Club Theatre, Granville
Island to july 16. Reservations:
687-1644.

OW DO we manipu-

late memory? Do we

remember what we
want or the way it teally
was?

The fascinating question is
asked almost at the end of Dancing
At Lughnasa (pronounced loo-na-
sa and derived from the harvest
festival honoring the pagan god
Lugh} by Michael, who has
remembered the action of the play
as it unfolds over two summer
afternoons in: 1936.

Michaei’s memories of that year
are the first he has retained of his
father, who has come to visit his
mother before running away to
fight for the “big cause” of the
international Brigade in Spain.

Born out of wedlock and raised
by his mother Chris and four aunts,
Michael watches from behind a
bush as his father meets with his
mother for the first time in 18
months.

Watching from the kitchen win-
dow are Chris’ sisters: Kate,
Maggie, Agnes and Rose.

Each view the meeting differ-
ently. Each viewpoint is correct.

Michael’s eight-year-old experi-
ence is the promise of “a man’s
bike,” a promise to be clutched as
fiercely and certainly as any holy
relic.

The empty betrayal of that

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promise is an older lesson Michael
must learn, just as the adult
Michael discovers the lonely truth
that his father has a wife and family
in Wales.

Brian Friel’s award-winning
play attempts to create on stage the
sensation of memory, a conceptual
challenge of the highest magnitude
since it is, at one and the same
time, a synthesis of reality and illu-
sion.

And because the play is con-
structed from such a delicate set of

ws

notes it cannot withstand even the
stightest sensation of being off-key,

So much of this Arts Club pro-
duction under the direction of
Sherry Bie is really good that it
pains me to say that the magic |
believe is contained within this
script is only partially released.

The acting is generally outstand-
ing.

Alec Willows as Michael is
direct, unaffected and compelling.

Nicola Lipman’s Kate is a won-
derfully textured performance: a

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kind heart gradually shining
through from underneath the
authoritarian exterior of a parish
school teacher and surrogate moth-
er.

And Wendy Noel's poignant
Maggie most clearly caught the
tragedy and pain of a life with little
opportunity masked by an earthy
good humor.

Rut it is the seality of that life
that 1s never bricked into the set-up
of this production.

| never believed in the poverty,

the dirt and the relentless, repeti-
tive grind of a daily existence that
offers no hope except that of heav-
en for a blameless life.

Knitting is a hobby, not a cot-
tage industry in this production. +

it's as if Bie’s and the design
approach is geared to the beauty of
paganism rather than the need for
it.

The casting of Hrothgar
Mathews as the man who, despite

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