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A drunken thinker alights on what could also be his pinnacle argument: That we’re formed not by the information of historical past, however by our creativeness of it. “We must not ever stop renewing these photographs,” he says, or we’ll cease dwelling.
That thirsty scholar is Hugh (Seán McGinley), who runs considered one of Eire’s clandestine (and unlawful) hedge-schools, educating a country meeting of grownup pupils out of his dilapidated shanty. “Translations,” from 1980, is the primary play within the Friel Mission, a season of three works on the Irish Repertory Theater. A modest but beautiful revival directed by Doug Hughes, it makes a rigorous case not just for Brian Friel’s pre-eminence as an interpreter of Irish nationwide id, however for the vitality of artwork in deciphering life.
It’s 1833 in Friel’s fictional small city, Ballybeg, the place a candy, putrid odor rising from the potato fields forebodes famine and an ingress of redcoats threatens to blight the native heritage. A revolt in 1798 led to not independence however to pressured union with Britain in the UK. And now, British troopers, together with the listless romantic Lieutenant Yolland (Raffi Barsoumian), are mapping the countryside and anglicizing Irish place-names. One among Hugh’s two sons, Owen (Seth Numrich), has turn out to be not only a translator, however a champion for the “King’s good English,” extra enthused concerning the endeavor than even Yolland. The actors lend the fraternity between these younger males an vitality and curiosity that emphasizes the implications of what they’re doing: renaming a homeland out from underneath its inhabitants’ toes.
Yolland is the one who hesitates, although not on ethical grounds: A hapless son of empire, he fetishizes feeling like an outsider, rising candy on the sound of Irish vowels and even sweeter on Maire (Mary Wiseman), a milkmaid along with her sights set on America. Their giddy, headlong infatuation is fueled by mutual incomprehension, earlier than a pointy flip whose doubtlessly tragic fallout Wiseman performs with affecting transparency.
Friel’s shrewd spin on the pastoral drama is grounded within the convictions of those rigorously drawn characters. However the play additionally confronts hovering questions concerning the nature of language — the way it connects individuals to their houses (the trodden-earth set is by Charlie Corcoran) and to 1 one other, and what occurs when a local tongue is erased.
Owen Campbell delivers a quieter register of heartbreak as Hugh’s humbler son, Manus, whose dream of preserving homegrown schooling, with Maire at his aspect, turns into one other colonial casualty. Embodying excessive ends of the communicative spectrum are Sarah (Erin Wilhelmi), a presumed mute who struggles to articulate her identify, and Jimmy Jack (John Keating), a raveled bookworm who waxes at size in Greek and Latin about his crush on Athene, the goddess of knowledge.
Wearing clay-colored peasant garb by Alejo Vietti, and tenderly lit by Michael Gottlieb, every of those characters is illustrated with a Rembrandt-like specificity. As their portraits clarify, it’s important to maintain reimagining the plight of these consumed by imperial appetites. Doing so might result in deeper understanding amongst us.
Translations
By means of Dec. 31 on the Irish Repertory Theater, Manhattan; irishrep.org. Operating time: 2 hours quarter-hour.
