Alastair Whatley’s touring production of Brian Friel’s Dancing At Lughnasa plays York for one night only tomorrow at the Theatre Royal’s TakeOver Festival at 7.30pm.

In his return to the stage after a long hiatus, Daragh O’Malley plays Father Jack in a story set in the summer of 1936 in a cottage in the remote Irish village of Ballybeg.

There, the five Mundy sisters live a simple life in the shadow of the hills of Donegal with a wireless set called Marconi and their brother, the aforementioned Father Jack, who has recently returned from being a missionary priest among lepers in Uganda.

What drew you to appear in Brian Friel’s bittersweet play of Irish identity under siege in a changing world, Daragh?

“Well, I haven’t done any theatre for ten years – since I did Patrick Marber’s poker play Dealers Choice in Los Angeles I’ve been doing television – but my history is that I was in the audience for the first night at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin 1990. The reaction was amazing that night; it was a show that everybody was immediately excited about and knew it was special and it went on to play 495 performances on Broadway, winning a Tony award.

“That first night, I saw a character that I thought I could play one day, and here I am some 21 years later, playing him in a national tour, criss-crossing the country for four months.”

What are the strengths of Friel’s play?

“We are all cavemen and we all love to go to dark places and listen to people telling stories. It’s a masterpiece that’s slowly getting the recognition it deserves. It’s been likened to Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie, but I think it’s more accessible. Friel talks about harmony in family life being under threat… and though the play is set in 1936, it’s not that different from today: there are 1,000 men emigrating from rural Ireland each week, going to London, Canada, America, and I don’t know how long it will take for Ireland to recover.”

• Daragh O’Malley is best known for playing Patrick Harper in the ITV series Sharpe. He is the founder of The Sharpe’s Children Foundation, which supports the primary education of orphaned children who are at risk and marginalised. The foundation’s main focus is the erection of residential early education centres, to be known as “Sharpe’s Shelters”, in India, Ukraine, Turkey, Portugal and in the United Kingdom – all areas where the Sharpe television series was filmed.

For details, visit sharpeschildren.com