Berkeley, Calif.: unafraid of Virginia Woolf.(FRONT & CENTER)

American Theatre, March, 2007 by Gener, Randy

BUT SO MANY THINGS HAPPEN IN 'TO THE LIGHTHOUSE'!

War breaks out across Europe. Mrs. Ramsay, the beautiful hostess and central figure of Virginia Woolf's 1927 modernist novel, struggles to throw the perfect dinner party. Her daughter Prue dies in giving birth to a child. The family's oldest son, Andrew, is killed in battle. And the painter Lily Briscoe puts the definitive stroke to the canvas she had abandoned during her last visit to the Ramsay's summer house. So the idea that To the Lighthouse is sorely lacking in event is clearly preposterous. The concomitant notion that it would be impossible to turn Woolf's numinous book about grief, death and the passage of time into an engrossing (and more important: playable) stage piece has likely been put forward...

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