"Dancing at Lughnasa"

It is 1936 and harvest time in County Donegal. In a house just outside the village of Ballybeg live the Mundy sisters, barely making ends meet, their ages ranging from twenty-six up to forty. The two male members of the household are brother Jack, a missionary priest, repatriated from Africa by his superiors after twenty-five years, and the seven year-old child of the youngest sister.

In depicting two days in the life of this menage, Brain Friel evokes not simply the interior landscape of a group of human beings trapped in thier domestic situation, but the wider landscape, interior and exterior, Christain and pagan, of which they are nonetheless a part.