Act I

Act I is set “on a warm day in early August 1936,” in the homes of the Mundy Family, two miles outside the village of Ballybeg, County Donegal, Ireland. The play opens with a monologue by Michael, who introduces the play as a nostalgic memory of the summer when he was seven years old. The family of five sisters, who raised him, have just aquired their first wireless radio. The sisters, aged from 26 to 40 include Kate, Maggie, Rose, Agnes, and Chris (Michael’s mother). Kate is the oldest and the only one who is working outside the home. She is a schoolteacher and feels the responsibilty of looking after her four sisters. In addition to the arrival of the radio, Michael’s Uncle Jack, who has been a missionary in a leper colony in Uganda for the past twenty-five years, has returned home. He is sick with malaria but it seems that he has lost his religion and has engaged in pagan rites in Africa. This brings a sense of shame to the family as they are living withing a small Irish community in the early 20th century. In the opinion of the local parish priest, Jack is now unfit to conduct Mass. Jacks’s condition highlights the similarities between the indigenous cultures of Ireland and Africa.

Michael explains in this opening monologue that he was a child born our of wedlock, and had only seen his father, Gerry Evans, a few times.

The action of the play opens as the five sisters do chores while occasionally breaking into singing and dancing, inspired by their new radio which they call Marconi. Michael, as a boy, discusses with his aunts the kites he is building. Agnes suggests that they all attend the upcoming local harvest dance, to which Maggie, Rose and Chris respond enthusiastically. But Kate vetoes the idea, saying that they are all too old to attend the dance. The sisters discuss a local boy who is suffering from severe burns that he got while attending the Festival of Lughnasa, a pagan tradition. When the radio, which only works intermittently, is turned on again, the sisters all break into a frenzied dance together, which only ends after the radio breaks down again and the music is cut off. Looking out the window, they see Gerry Evans, Michael’s Father, who has not paid them a visit for over a year, approaching the house. Despite the disapproval of her sisters, Gerry is irresponsible as a father and it seems has abandoned Chris on many occasion, Chris approaches Gerry in the yard, where they both talk and laugh. Gerry tells Chris that he has taken a job selling gramophones, and that he will soon be joining the military to fight in Spain. Gerry spontaneously takes Chris into his arms and dances with her. Chris is still in love with him but knows that he will not assume the responsibilities associated with marriage.

Later, Uncle Jack explains rituals and cermonies in which he participated in Uganda, without regard to his Christian profession. Act I ends with Jack re-enacting a ritual dance and drumbeat from Uganda.

Act II takes place “in early September, three weeks later.” In the opening scene, Maggies is doing chores in the kitchen, and Michael sits writing what he says is a letter to Santa Claus when Uncle Jack enters, about to take one of his many walks of the day. Jack describes at length a ritual ceremony in which he participated in Uganda, which included the sacrifice of animals. Jack then leaves for his walk. Chris and Gerry enter, as Gerry explains that he has just signed up for military duty in Spain. Gerry climbs a tree in an attempt to fix the radio by working on the aerial. Agnes returns home, carrything pails of blackberries that she has picked. It is discovered that Rose, who had told Agnes she wasn’t feeling well and was going home to rest, is not home. Rose then returns home, and explains that she had arranged to go on a boat ride with Danny Bradley, the married man with whom she is in love.

Kate loses her job in a Catholic school because of Jack’s reputation. The advent of a new knitting factory close to the village means their home work knitting gloves becomes redundant and they are left without any money. The adult Michael then provides a long monologue that explains the fate of most of the characters. Agnes and Rose left the family and never returned; twenty-five years later, Michael discovered that they had gone to London, where they became destitute, and eventually died. Michael also learned, after Gerry’s death, that his father has maintained a legitimate wife and three children in Wales, about which Chris never knew. Uncle Jack died suddenly of a heart attack within a year of his return to Ireland.

The scene returns to the kitchen in September, 1936, where the omen are doing chores and talking amongst themselves. Gerry looks at the completed kites and child Michael has made; each have “a crude, cruel, grinning face, primitively drawn, garishly painted.”

The adult Michael ends with a monologue in which he states that, with Agnes and Rose gone, and Uncle Jack dead, “much of the spirit and fun had gone out of their lives; and when my time came to go away, in the selfish way of young men I was happy to escape.” Gerry disappears to Spain. Later Michael receives a letter from a young man of his own age also called Michael Evans who was the son of Gerry. Gerry was married and had lived with his wife and three children in Wales but had died of his nostalgiv memories of that summer of 1936. The play concludes with Chris working in the knitting factory while Kate gets a job tutoring a young family.