THE LANTERN MAN

Professional Drama

Jane Coyle presents
THE LANTERN MAN

A powerful new play from the writer of The Suitcase, winner of the Belfast Telegraph Audience Award at the 2015 Ulster Bank Belfast International Arts Festival.


Directed by Stephen Beggs, with an excellent cast of seven actors from Ireland and England, this drama of hidden history and conflicting loyalty was inspired by the real life discovery of a collection of World War I lantern slides in a Belfast church.




A powerful new play from the writer of The Suitcase, winner of the Belfast Telegraph Audience Award at the 2015 Ulster Bank Belfast International Arts Festival.

Set in Dublin during Christmas/New Year 1915/16. Wounded in body and spirit, Johnny McGrath returns from active service on the Western Front to a city he barely recognises. He discovers that he has inherited hundreds of glass lantern slides showing images of soldiers in action. He decides to put them on show, to tell the public the real story of the war.

In the process, he brings together two women from very different social backgrounds, united by a single tragic event that unfolded in the heat of battle. As tension mounts on the streets, Johnny comes to realise that there is more to the photographs than meets the eye and that secrets can be hard to keep.