Setting

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.