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Theatre Review Nothing lost in Translations

LYNNE WALSH sees a production of Brian Friel's great play on the fraught relationship between the English and the Irish which is telling in every detail

Translations
National Theatre, London

BRIAN FRIEL’S modern classic Translations is replete with allusions — to the liminal times and places of 1930s Ireland, to cultural oppression and revival, to imperialism and resistance. Set in rural Donegal, it charts the British army's intent to map an area and replace the Gaelic names with English.

So far, so prosaic, but Translations is also a paean to storytelling. There is folklore, be it Greek, Roman or Irish. And there are contemporary stories of a potato blight coming, of emigration, of the grim struggles of women with families of 10 or more, where a baby’s wake may follow soon in the footsteps of its christening.

Language is, of course, the beating heart of this piece. It can be flamboyant, on the lips of schoolmaster Hugh (the colossus that is Ciaran Hinds), with his delight in Latinate precision. Yet the translations offered by returning prodigal son Owen, straining to be a buffer between English officers and Irish villagers, reveal his own growing fear that his smart new paymasters might have malevolent intent. His interpretations are not an interface but those of denial and desperation.

But the dialogue is never ornamental. Each character’s use of language lays bare their emotional state. Old Jimmy Jack’s professed love of Athene is a grand comic turn — for a few moments. In truth, it expresses the pitiful state of the lonely old in a country where the young are leaving in droves.

There are shades of Beckett and Shakespeare in this elderly tramp, known to his compatriots as the “infant prodigy,” and played with great finesse by Dermot Crowley (pictured). He and Hinds fill their scenes with rambunctious tenderness — they sense their own history might die with them, but they’re burning bright to the end.

Friel’s love scene between ambitious Maire (Judith Roddy) and the young romantic orthographer Yolland (Adetomiwa Edun) is operatic in scale and their stumbling towards communication enchants. Who would not want them to fall in love and celebrate their yearning for “always?”

But, with Friel, there is another element. This dialogue blossoms in spite of language and the juxtaposition with the barking threats from the tight-lipped Captain Lancey, as his red-coated troops reveal their true colours, is chilling.

The pace of Ian Rickson’s sensitive direction is perfect, from the opening to the very last electrifying second. The cast bring superb detail to every gesture and expression — dialect coach Majella Hurley has done a brilliant job — and designer Rae Smith's setting is so convincing you almost smell the turf fires. Yet, squint a little and this could be a battlefield.

It’s said that no-one is really gone until the last person who loved them stops saying their name. That's certainly the case with this luminescent work and its litany of old Irish place names: “Carraig an Phoill. Loch an Iubhair. Machaire Buidhe ...”

Runs until August 11, box office: nationaltheatre.org.uk.

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