Brian Friel’s semi-autobiographical play, set in 1936 in the Ireland of his boyhood, features five unmarried sisters based on his mother and aunts. At first it seems like an exercise in sepia-tinted nostalgia. There is a postcard-style vista of the hills of Donegal at the back, softened by a fringe so the mise-en-scene appears to be the stuff of fuzzy, soft-focus memory.
In front is a house where seven-year-old Michael plays while his mother, Chris (Alison Oliver), and aunts bicker, stew over the past and bake soda bread. The child is emphatically invisible, the women kissing thin air as they reach for him. An adult counterpart (Tom Vaughan-Lawlor) speaks his words instead or describes the ways things were, back then, when he was a boy.
