STAGE TUBE: Sneak Peek at Highlights of DANCING AT LUGHNASA

Royal & Derngate's Made in Northampton season continues with the multi-award-winning Dancing At Lughnasa, by Irish playwright Brian Friel. This tender and moving yet funny play takes to the Royal stage from Friday 24 May to Saturday 15 June. BroadwayWorld has highlights of the show below.

Set in rural Donegal in 1936, at a time when life was simple but making ends meet seems impossibly hard, the play follows the five Mundy sisters as they laugh, cry and dance together.

First performed at The Abbey Theatre in Dublin in 1990, the play transferred to London's National Theatre the next year, winning the Olivier Award for Best Play and subsequently went to Broadway where it added the Tony Award for Best Play to a growing clutch of awards. The film version, made in 1998, starred Meryl Streep as Kate Mundy.

Richard Beecham returns to Royal & Derngate to direct after his critically-acclaimed productions of Terrence Rattigan's In Praise Of Love and Charlotte Jones' Humble Boy. The designer is Naomi Dawson (As You Like It - RSC) who previously worked with Richard on In Praise Of Love in Northampton. Lighting design is by Lee Curran (nominated for an Olivier 2013 for Constellations at the Royal Court). Jon Nicholls returns to Royal & Derngate as Composer and Sound Designer, fresh from work on the theatre's most recent production A Midsummer Night's Dream and earlier work on the Young America season with Laurie Sansom, which transferred to The National Theatre.

The talented cast includes Milo Twomey, who starred in the hugely popular Brief Encounter, which Royal & Derngate co-produced with Kneehigh, and Christopher Saul who recently won a Helen Hayes award in the US for his role in the Globe tour of Hamlet. Others in the cast are Sarah Corbett, Colm Gormley, Gráinne Keenan, Caroline Lennon, Michele Moran and Zoë Rainey.

For tickets or more information, visit: www.royalandderngate.co.uk

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