It is 1936 in Ballybeg, County Donegal where we meet the five unmarried and impoverished Mundy sisters through the eyes of Chris's son Michael, now in middle-age, as he looks back to the summer of 1936 when he was a boy of seven. His memories recall a surviving tradition - the Festival of Lughnasa (pronounced “loonasa”), a pagan thanksgiving for the harvest, and a time for dancing, the dominant symbol of the play. Symbolically too it is also the time that Jack, a Roman Catholic priest, brother to the sisters and Michael's uncle, returns from Uganda after twenty five years. With a wealth of humour and sadness this is a family story told with much poignancy and understanding. 

The original productions of this play are credited as: