‘Dancing’ Leaps With Life

It’s 1936 in rural Ireland. Five sisters--unmarried and struggling to make ends meet--are attending to household chores when their unreliable radio crackles to life and a folk song throbs insistently through the air. One sister lets out a whoop and begins stomping. As though heeding some primitive call, her siblings one by one join her in a floorboard-pounding frenzy of dance--giving themselves over to pleasure, letting their cares slip away.

As wonderfully crafted as the words are in Brian Friel’s “Dancing at Lughnasa,” it is this nonverbal sequence that speaks most eloquently. Director Jessica Kubzansky, choreographer Kay Cole and their performers get it gloriously right in a production that is part of McCoy Rigby Entertainment’s professional season at the La Mirada Theatre. They poignantly illustrate the heart’s need to leap free and demonstrate, in the process, how those thundering folk steps in “Riverdance” and “Lord of the Dance” have sprung from Irish life.

Friel, the Irish author of such plays as “Translations” and the recent “Molly Sweeney,” presents his story as a flashback to the golden, shrinking days of the autumn before this family slipped into a long, dark winter of the soul.

Jamison Jones brings playfulness, compassion and a nicely understated sense of loss to the role of Michael, the youngest sister’s illegitimate son, whose memories propel the story. As his 26-year-old mother Chris, in the flashback, Michelle Duffy conveys a delicate loveliness about to be turned hard and brittle. She’s already looking haggard, and sharpness is creeping into her voice.

As Maggie, the second-oldest sister and family jokester, Cynthia Mace is at once gritty and lighthearted. She knows she’s been dealt a bad hand, but she laughs at fate rather than being defeated by it. And Jefrey Alan Chandler is befuddled yet quietly resilient as Jack, the oldest sibling, a longtime missionary priest who has been sent home from Africa in disgrace.

Costumer Zoe DuFour dresses the family in humble work clothes yet adds little details--a touch of lace at the collar, for instance--to indicate that the sisters handmade these garments with love. Set designer John Iacovelli delivers a sturdy stone house that is surrounded by a wild, overgrown yard and humbled beneath a dazzling blue sky.

* “Dancing at Lughnasa,” La Mirada Theatre, 14900 La Mirada Blvd. Tuesday-Saturday, 8 p.m.; Sunday, 7:30 p.m.; also Saturday-Sunday, 2:30 p.m. Ends May 10. (562) 944-9801. $33. Running time: 2 hours, 21 minutes.