Dancing At Lughnasa

Painted in tiny, bitter brushstrokes that add up to a devastating picture of all-but-indomitable spirits under siege, this ensemble piece is driven by five powerhouse performances. Based on the 1991 Tony Award-winning play by Brian Friel, it's set in rural Ireland in 1936, where the sum total of a woman's life is measured in marriage and children, even though poverty has scattered the country's marriage-aged men to jobs in faraway America and Australia. The unmarried Mundy sisters live hardscrabble lives cloaked in prim respectability, just outside tiny Ballybeg. All except Christina (Catherine McCormack), the youngest and quiet shame of the family: She has an ador...