BWW Reviews: Friel's lyrical DANCING AT LUGHNASA onstage at Belmont's Troutt Theatre

There comes a moment midway through act one of Brian Friel's Dancing at Lughnasa - now onstage at the Troutt Theatre at Belmont University - when the five fictional Mundy sisters are suddenly swept up by the music that comes rather mysteriously and intermittently from a undependable wireless set called "Marconi," and they join together in an exuberant and joyful dance that stands out vividly in contrast to the near-poverty and dour circumstances in which they lead their day-to-day lives. It's a rapturously beautiful scene that strikes deeply at your heartstrings, providing a brief, startling counterpoint to the darker and more dramatic scenes that come before and after.

Superbly performed by a cast of eight exceptional student actors in the Belmont University Department of Theatre and Dance, under the direction of Bill Feehely (co-founder of Nashville's acclaimed Actors Bridge Ensemble), Dancing at Lughnasa opens the 2011-2012 season with theater of the highest order, delivering a sumptuously appointed physical production that soars because of the wonderfully nuanced portrayals of the actors.

Set in 1936, in the fictional village of Ballybeg in Donegal on Ireland's West Coast, Friel's play is semi-autobiographical, based upon his memories of his mother and her sisters. It is a memory play (not unlike Tennessee Williams' most famous "memory play," The Glass Menagerie, and there are similar themes playing out in both plays: a family in dire financial straits sees hopes and dreams dashed by the appearance and subsequent disappearance of a gentleman caller), so there are touches of lyrical grace and moments of beauty counterbalanced by the realities of the circumstances in which the family must subsist, accounting for the play's deeper resonance. The play's sentimentality, though never manipulative or heavy-handed, is palpable and its emotional impact is nothing short of stunning, leavened with flashes of humor and wit that make the play's story all the more compellingly genuine.

Feehely's focused direction gives his actors the freedom to take chances and they do so fearlessly, while remaining devoted to artfully telling the story provided them by Friel's script. Performed upon the gorgeous set designed by Adam Ellis, with lighting design by department chair Paul Gatrell, the production's design aesthetic helps to capture the period tone required of the play's setting and time frame.

Friel's play is an exquisitely written piece of literature that never fails to move audiences with its complex and richly detailed story about the lives of the Mundy sisters, although the acoustics of the Troutt Theatre threaten to undermine the play's universal appeal. The best efforts of sound designer Bekah Reimer notwithstanding, much of the beauty of Friel's words and the lilt of the Irish accent are lost somewhere up among the rafters of the theater, the requisite lavaliere microphones stripping away much of the shading and texture of the fine vocal performances of the actors.

The five Mundy sisters are all unmarried, with elder sister Kate the only one with a full-time and well-paying job (she's a teacher in the village school), Maggie maintains the family household, Agnes and Rose (who is "simple" aka developmentally disabled) stitch handmade gloves that are sold in the village and youngest sister Christina is mother to seven-year-old Michael, her "love child" with the charming roué Gerry Evans, a ballroom dancing Welshman cum traveling salesman who, yearning for adventure, plans to join the International Brigade to challenge Franco's forces in the Spanish Civil War. Father Jack, the eldest Mundy child, has returned from 25 years as a missionary in Uganda, suffering from malaria and struggling to recall the English language he has had little use for in Africa and striving to retrieve his long dormant Catholicism.

The performances of Feehely's ensemble of actors are uniformly and consistently on-target, and the ease with which they deliver their lines in Irish accents (credit goes to Brent Maddox for his high-caliber dialect coaching) is impressive, and the sense of abandon with which they approach the lovely scenes in which they express joy so exuberantly through dance (kudos to choreographer Alyssa Maddox) is keenly felt throughout.

Christina's son Michael, grown up to a fine young man, provides narration from stage right, serving as a conduit for the audience to the events that transpire in the simple and intimate confines of the Mundy cottage. Miles Gattrell's confident performance as Michael - and his command of the words crafted by Friel to provide exposition for the play - allows the audience to feel the joy and anguish that concurrently affect the Mundy household. With Gatrell's expert delivery, the audience pays witness to the most intimate and mundane of moments with an ease that never seems the least bit voyeuristic.

The five women playing the Mundy sisters display versatility, each one thoroughly committed to bringing her character to life with a vigorous and lively grace. Kyla Lowder plays the no-nonsense Kate with estimable restraint which makes Kate's emotional outbursts all the more riveting, while she underscores her performance with a loving warmth that adds more dimension to her performance. Kallen Prosterman, as Maggie, provides much of the heart of the Mundy household with her similarly shaded portrayal, her own finely honed sense of comic timing making Maggie's flashes of humor more believable.

As Agnes, Blair Allison's performance is quietly effective, her most significant moments coming through her heartfelt reactions to things as they happen around her, while Adrienne Hall's portrayal of Rose is both understated and somehow showier given her character's more challenging attributes. The onstage relationship portrayed by Allison and Hall as Agnes and Rose is nicely underplayed, which adds to its ultimate power.

Gina D'Arco is the beautiful Christina, her serious demeanor providing the emotional heft necessary to make the character's happier moments that much more effective. When Christina speaks to (and about) Michael, you see the lightness in her personality, and when she is paired with Matthew Rosenbaum as Gerry Evans, her smile  is blindingly bright and all-encompassing, casting her glow over the whole proceedings. The handsome Rosenbaum's Gerry is high-spirited and theatrical, while being completely earthbound and refreshingly real. Rosenbaum's focus never wavers as he brings Gerry to life with an ebullient glee that belies his ne'er-do-well demeanor and masks the secrets that are revealed as the play progresses.

Luke Hatmaker completes the cast as Father Jack, the Catholic priest who has gone native in every sense of the phrase, and the actor delivers a skillful performance that is amazing, so completely does he give himself over to his character. You'll forget that the tall and youthful Hatmaker is a 20-something-year-old college student, so effortless is his transformation to the broken and bowed Irishman in his mid-50s.

Dancing at Lughnasa. By Brian Friel. Directed by Bill Feehely. Presented by the Belmont University Department of Theatre and Dance. At The Troutt Theatre, Nashville. Through October 9. For tickets and information, call (615) 460-8500.