Raffi Barsoumian as Lieutenant George Yolland (left), Seth Numrich as Owen (standing), and Seán McGinley as Hugh in Brian Friel’s Translations at the Irish Repertory Theatre.
More than 40 years have passed since Brian Friel’s Translations premiered, but Doug Hughes’s haunting new production shows that this play remains relevant as it explores the darker issues surrounding Anglo-Irish relations and the profound problem of language.
John Keating plays the learned Jimmy Jack, and Mary Wiseman inhabits the strong-minded Maire in Translations, directed by Doug Hughes.
Translations takes place in an Irish hedge school in Baille Beag (“small town”), a fictive site in County Donegal in 1833. Hedge schools—named after their ad hoc, informal locations—sprang up in the early 18th century because of British laws that banned Catholic schools. In Hughes’s production, the hedge school takes on the contours of an abandoned barn (set design by Charlie Corcoran), where the learned schoolmaster Hugh (Seán McGinley) and his lame son Manus (Owen Campbell) teach Latin, Greek, Irish, and a smattering of mathematics.
Not far away, the British Royal Engineers have pitched camp to conduct the first mapping of Ireland; Hugh’s younger son Owen (Seth Numrich), serves as their translator. When Owen tries to explain his job to his family and locals at the hedge school, his brother Manus wonders if he has enlisted in the British army. Owen responds:
I’m employed as a part-time, underpaid, civilian interpreter. My job is to translate the quaint, archaic tongue you people persist in speaking into the King’s good English.
Meanwhile, a pompous English cartographer, Captain Lancey (Rufus Collins), provides a sanitized view of the project to change Gaelic names to English ones. What he fails to mention is that the result may involve dispensing with the lore or stories behind the names—and, inevitably, an erasure of indigenous Irish culture. “It is not the literal past, the facts of history, that shape us,” says Hugh, “but images of the past embodied in language.”
Although resentment smolders over the project, love sparks between Maire (Mary Wiseman), a local dairymaid, and Lieutenant George Yolland (Raffi Barsoumian), a young English officer working on it. Since Maire is already involved with Manus, their blossoming romance creates chaos. Indeed, Jimmy Jack (John Keating), an aging bachelor enamored of drink and Greek, Latin, and Irish culture, readily points out the taboo of marrying outside the tribe:
Oona Roche plays the cunning countrywoman Bridget, and Owen Laheen is the cocksure Doalty in Translations. Photographs by Carol Rosegg.
Do you know the Greek word endogamein? It means to marry within the tribe. And the word exogamein means to marry outside the tribe. And you do not cross those borders casually—both sides get very angry.
That said, one of the tenderest love scenes in modern theater occurs between the Irish-speaking Maire and the English-speaking George. When they manage to be alone with each other after a dance, they communicate by reciting Irish name places and gesturing. This Edenic moment, mistily lighted by Michael Gottlieb, is sheer theatrical magic.
While this “forbidden love” episode adds much emotional depth to the narrative, Friel’s genius is that his play is written and performed in English, although most of his characters are supposed to be speaking Irish. This linguistic device has amazing power. For by listening in English, an audience becomes actively complicit in the brutal erasure of the Irish language and culture.
Translations isn’t a play with a happily-ever-after ending. In fact, its narrative turns tragic in Act III when Yolland vanishes after the wooing scene, prompting Lancey to send a search party for him and issuing threats to the community.
Friel provides no ready answers for the audience. Consequently, Translations quickly morphs into a whodunit story, with Manus among the anti-British suspects.
Erin Wilhelmi plays the speech-impaired Sarah, and Owen Campbell is Manus in Brian Friel’s masterpiece Translations.
There is uniformly strong acting in this 10-member cast, with a few standout performances. McGinley portrays Hugh, the hard-drinking master of the hedge-school, with just the right residual dignity. Numrich slips into the role of Owen like a second skin, his confident manner and smart clothes (costumes by Alejo Vietti) marking him as a city man with a future. Keating doesn’t disappoint as the comic tippler Jimmy Jack, who is so ensconced in the mythic world that he believes Pallas Athena has proposed to him (“She asked me—I assented.”) And Erin Wilhelmi is well-cast as the speech-impaired Sarah, who’s not only a character but a symbol in the play for the Irish people’s loss of tongue and name.
Hughes wisely directs with a light hand, allowing Friel’s rich language to speak for itself. Friel, who has been dubbed the “Irish Chekhov,” has a bent for creating characters who talk endlessly about the “old certainties” even as their society is in meltdown.
For those who have never experienced Translations, this new production is a must-see. For those who have, this revival—playful, serious, provocative—offers fresh insights into Friel’s 1980 masterpiece.
The Irish Repertory Company production of Translations runs through Dec. 31 at the Irish Repertory Company (132 W. 22nd St.). Evening performances are Tuesday through Saturday at 7 p.m.; matinees are at 2 p.m. Wednesday and Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday. For tickets and more information, visit www.irishrep.org.
