Town Hall screening of To the Lighthouse

The Town Hall Theatre will host an in-person screening of Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, adapted by Marina Carr, next Tuesday, March 22 at 8pm.  It’s also available on demand from this Saturday, March 19, to Sunday, March 27.

Directed by Annabelle Comyn, the formidable cast includes Derbhle Crotty, Declan Conlon, Aoife Duffin, Olwen Fouéré, Nick Dunning, Colin Campbell, Kyle Hixon, Maura Bird, Kwaku Fortune and Gillian Buckle.

Woolf’s  1924 novel To the Lighthouse, a highlight of the Modernist arts movement, has been reimagined for theatre by Marina Carr in a production from award-winning director Annabelle Comyn. First broadcast as part of Cork Midsummer Festival 2021, it’s a co-production by Hatch Theatre Company and The Everyman.

The play opens in 1910 with the Ramsay family at their holiday home in the Isle of Skye in Scotland, spending carefree days with friends. Children play, Mr Carmichael reclines with handkerchief over his face, Lily paints a picture and six-year-old James wants to sail to the lighthouse. Life is good.

But underneath this apparently tranquil surface lie deep currents of longing and frustration. And with a promised trip to the lighthouse cancelled, tensions erupt and fling these lives into turmoil. This world is in transition and death becomes a footnote to a seismic global change. The people who remain try to cope with this new era and the loss it brings.

Woolf’s novel is set between 1910 and 1920, an era of irreversible change. Marina Carr’s adaptation captures that urgency as it recalls childhood emotions and highlights emptiness and yearning in adult relationships.

The Irish Examiner described this production as “a gloriously ambitious and inventive production” while the Business Post felt “Carr’s Lighthouse Illuminates the way”.

The in-person screening takes place next Tuesday, March 22, at 8pm and lasts for two hours and 15 minutes. It’s available on-demand from Saturday until March 27.

Tickets €10 at tht.ie.