Dancing at Lughnasa Critical Essay | Critical Review by Jack Kroll

Critical Review by Jack Kroll

SOURCE: "The Belles of Balleybeg," in Newsweek, Vol. CXVIII, No. 19, 4 November 1991, p. 79.

In October 1991, the entire Abbey Theatre production arrived in New York from Dublin, and Dancing at Lughnasa opened on Broadway. In the following review of that staging. Kroll praises every aspect of the play, declaring it "as powerful and haunting as anything [Friel has ever written. "]

Who else but an Irish dramatist would come along to remind Broadway—musical-drenched, play-starved Broadway—what a real play is? The Irish have practically been custodians of the English-speaking stage for 100 years: Wilde, Shaw, Synge, Yeats, Beckett. Brian Friel, 62, is the true inheritor of that tradition, and Dancing at Lugh nasa is as powerful and haunting as anything he's ever written. In a spasm of sanity, Actors' Equity has allowed the entire Abbey Theatre production to come over from Dublin. The emotion generated by Friel's writing,...
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