Mullingar celebrates centenary of Joyce's visit to the town

While Dublin has been celebrating the return of the famous Ulysses manuscript, Mullingar will have its own Bloomsday festivities…

While Dublin has been celebrating the return of the famous Ulysses manuscript, Mullingar will have its own Bloomsday festivities tomorrow.

To mark the centenary of James Joyce's visit to the Westmeath town in 1900, a special celebratory event is being arranged in the town today and tomorrow.

Joyce, when he was in Mullingar, penned notes on local people and places, and these have not gone unnoticed, for instance when featured in Stephen Hero.

A local author, Leo Daly, has now written a play called The Ghost Strikes Back in celebration of the Joyce visit to the town 100 years ago.

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It is being presented in Mullingar Arts Centre, which is one of the most modern in the State, tonight and tomorrow at 8.30 p.m.

Directed by Sean Lynch and performed by local actors, the drama features the "ghosts" who are on stage and will deliver an insight into Joycean characters.

The cast includes two narrators, Patricia Gibney, who is co-director of the arts centre, and a local schoolteacher, Nicola Keating.

Their task is to bring the audience back in time to the days when Joyce arrived at Mullingar railway station, strolled along the banks of the Royal Canal and drank with the locals in the Greville Arms Hotel.

The hotel features a special wax statue of Joyce. Those who have wondered why his statue should be sitting in the lobby of the hotel now know the answer.