Back to Ballybeg with the Mundy sisters

Julie Sharkey stars in the Everyman’s production of Dancing at Lughnasa, writes Colette Sheridan

JULIE Sharkey, who plays the eldest sister, Kate, in an upcoming production of Brian Friel’s play, Dancing at Lughnasa, knows all about the financial insecurity that blights an actor’s life. Poverty is a recurring theme in the play, directed by the Everyman’s artistic director, Julie Kelleher.

Set in the summer of 1936, the five unmarried Mundy sisters are primarily dependent on Kate’s income from her teaching job. But even that is under threat when the sisters’ brother Jack, a missionary, returns to the family homestead in the fictional town of Ballybeg. It seems he ‘went native’ while in Uganda and his heretical views, known to the Catholic Church, have tainted Kate by association.