The Veil
May 1822, rural Ireland. The defrocked Reverend Berkeley arrives at the crumbling former glory of Mount Prospect House to accompany seventeen-year-old Hannah to England. She is to be married off to a Marquis in order to resolve the debts of her mother’s estate. However, compelled by the strange voices that haunt his beautiful young charge and a fascination with the psychic current that pervades the house, Berkeley proposes a séance, the consequences of which are catastrophic.
She says that sometimes, while she plays the piano, she can hear someone… singing. Or crying. I forget which.
Set around a haunted house hemmed in by a restive, starving populace, Conor McPherson’s new play weaves Ireland’s troubled colonial history into a transfixing story about the search for love, the transcendental and the circularity of time. His last production for the National was the Tony Award-winning The Seafarer.
All of you have a shared capacity to apprehend the beyond. And you perhaps more than any of them have the darkest instinct for second sight.
Read Conor McPherson's article in the Daily Telegraph and his recent interview about The Veil.
World Premiere
