‘Translations’—The Magic of Language Itself.
PicksInSix® Review | Ronald Keaton
It would be very easy to see “Translations,” the thick, challenging classic by the great Irish playwright Brian Friel, as a treatise about endless attacks on Irish colonialism. After all, British soldiers travel from town to town and literally change the names of where people live to make them conform with English culture and language—by force, if necessary. And in many ways, this is true. But, as the elegant production at Writers Theatre in Glencoe that opened Friday shows in no uncertain terms, the real story here is about the magic of language itself. Writers Artistic Director Braden Abraham has deftly followed the brushstrokes of the master Mr. Friel in creating this entire world of contradiction and mystery.
This was a period—Ireland in the 1830s, a delicate time historically, if such a word can be used for the Irish—that sat roughly a decade out from the vaunted potato famine, which would kill more than a million people and uprooted many more by some estimates. In order to create a seeming conformity in the Isles, these British soldiers helped establish the first National Schools, which encouraged literacy but provided classes only in English, and thus prohibited the speaking of Irish/Gaelic, which greatly contributed to its decline. This battle focuses on three characters— Hugh, a highly regarded teacher who speaks fluent Greek and Latin; his son Owen, who becomes a kind of interpreter for the soldiers, while caught between them and his love for his native land; and Yolland, a soldier who also maps the countryside and eventually falls for a young lass, rendering him, well, a bit lost in translation himself.
