The Play Podcast - 063 - Dancing at Lughnasa, by Brian Friel

05/24/23 • 73 min

Episode 063: Dancing at Lughnasa by Brian Friel

Host: Douglas Schatz Guest: Josie Rourke

Welcome to The Play Podcast where we explore the greatest new and classic plays. Each episode we choose a single play to talk about in depth with our expert guest. We’ll discuss the play’s origins, its themes, characters, structure and impact. For us the play is the thing.

Brian Friel’s magical memory play Dancing at Lughnasa is set at the time of the harvest festival in rural Ireland in 1936. It’s account of the events of that summer in the house of the five unmarried Mundy sisters is filtered many years later through the memory of Michael, the son of the youngest sister. His memory is undoubtedly unreliable, but it is also funny, poetic and profoundly poignant.

Josie Rourke, who directs the gorgeous new production of the play currently playing at the National Theatre in London, joins us to explore Friel’s spellbinding masterpiece.

Episode 063: Dancing at Lughnasa by Brian Friel

Host: Douglas Schatz Guest: Josie Rourke

Josie Rourke, who directs the gorgeous new production of the play currently playing at the National Theatre in London, joins us to explore Friel’s spellbinding masterpiece.

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The Play Podcast - 062 - Private Lives, by Noël Coward

Episode 062: Private Lives by Noël Coward

Host: Douglas Schatz Guest: Oliver Soden

Noël Coward’s play Private Lives is both a dazzling dramatic comedy and an excoriating portrait of love and marriage among the disaffected elite of the Jazz Age. Coward himself starred in the premiere production in both London and New York, the critics acclaiming the show’s construction and wit, but predicting that it would not last. As a new production opens at the Donmar theatre in London, I ask Coward’s newest biographer, Oliver Soden, why the play has aged so well.

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The Play Podcast - 064 - A Midsummer Night's Dream, by William Shakespeare

Episode 064: A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare

Host: Douglas Schatz Guest: Emma Smith

A Midsummer Night’s Dream has all the ingredients of classic romantic comedy: a magical setting, a merry-go-round of earnest young lovers, a fairy King and Queen, and a troupe of hapless comic actors, all given a supernatural spin in the course of a single moonlit night. But is the dream-like world of the wood outside Athens as benign a place as we imagine?

As we record this episode a new production of the play is part of the Summer season at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London, with Michelle Terry giving an outstanding performance as the sardonic sprite Puck.

My guest to help explore Shakespeare’s wondrous ‘visions’ is Emma Smith, Professor of Shakespeare Studies at Hertford College, Oxford.