Translations

Brian Friel’s play Translations, in previews with Manhattan Theater Company, is like a glass of cognac. You sip it, roll it around in your mouth and enjoy the different tastes. Translations takes the idea of language and sips it and rolls it around and you might almost enjoy it, if you can pay attention long enough.

In a play about language and how easily we understand one another and misunderstand one another it is ironic that some American-type people (clearing of the throat: me) have to pay awfully close attention to understand what is being said on stage with heavy Irish brogues and what sounded like some English accents in the mix. My ear for accents is not always as good as my palette when it comes to cognac, I confess.

What struck me in the story line was a particular arch in thought about language. First, we get a glimpse of how difficult it is to speak and how much we take it for granted in the opening scene as a young woman manages to slowly speak her name after considerable effort. Then, we see a classroom of people attempting to master the precision of language, their own language and older languages like Greek and Latin, with the entrance of the old schoolmaster.

This production starts to look better with the entry of the prodigal-type son Owen. Owen returns home after several years, employed as a translator for the English as they rename and remap Ireland. He is almost callous, certainly careless, regarding his job and the precision necessary, but actually impossible, in translating from one language to another.

In the story line, we later find that language is altogether unnecessary in love when a local Irish woman falls in love with an English soldier. When the soldier goes missing, no amount of talking, no precision of language, can ease tensions between the British and the Irish as the British promise to decimate the area (towns now named with English names on an English map) if the solder does not turn up.

The set on this was far more interesting than Friel’s Faith Healer (in an entirely separate production) last summer. I confess, though, to liking Faith Healer better. This felt a little too much like a classroom experience, ironically set in a classroom, than entertainment. The irritation was not so much that it made me think; rather, it was that too many ideas about language were thrown about without an effective moral to the story. As I was distracted by the smoke machine and the very real looking fire progressing towards the schoolhouse in the last scene I think I may have missed words of real depth and moral meaning spoken by the schoolteacher in his last words of wisdom for the audience.

Absent of these words, I took away a sense that sometimes language works, sometimes it does not, and no matter how many languages you know there will always be many that you do not. Also, sadly, no attention or thought was given to either slang or dialect—two important aspects of inclusion and exclusion in language. For attempting to be a comprehensive thought on language, perhaps it was not comprehensive enough. Either way, it felt like an average day at the theater.

I would not recommend it. I would have possibly brought my Dad or a foreign friend to see this with me. As a side note, even though it was a Sunday matinee, I think I may have been one of the only people under 40 in the theater. I can not say how the over 55 crowd enjoyed the show. I thought the play was okay. And, I found the production okay with a couple of standouts in the cast, notably Owen and his brother Manus.