Dancing at Lughnasa
Old Vic
Burnt by the Sun
Lyttelton
It’s almost physically painful to see the vandalism wrought at the Old Vic by the new stage configuration. It’s like looking at some doomed Darwinian experiment, a cloven-hoofed butterfly, a spaniel with a trunk, a winged slug. Worse still is the fussy, over-ambitious set for Anna Mackmin’s production of Dancing at Lughnasa. Apparently, no one realised that bolting a sycamore tree, yes an entire tree, to the upright of the proscenium arch and then dumping a big old stove next to it would look a bit weird. Arch, tree, stove, all in a line. Strangest thing I’ve seen all year. The play is a classic Irish wrist-slasher from the Frank McCourt school of rural suicidalism. Take cover, everyone. Blarney attack.
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