• Translations
• by Brian Friel
• Directed by Mark A. Rhea
• Produced by Keegan Theatre 
• Reviewed by Rosalind Lacy   

A knock-out punch is hard to see coming, but you know when you’ve been hit. Brian Friel’s Translations has that kind of riveting power so that you leave the theater reeling from its quaintly developed revelations. Keegan Theatre’s beautiful  restaging is a chance not to be missed. It’s a mesmerizing revival of director Mark A. Rhea’s 1997 Helen Hayes Award-nominated production.

First, it helps to know that the playwright, who comes from a Catholic Northern Irish family, wrote this modern classic in 1980 about 1830′s Ireland during a peak period of The Troubles. We may be familiar with English history as written by the winners in our textbooks. But the history Friel tells is told from the other side of history. 

Walk into the Church Street Theater and you immediately sense how its exposed brick- walled interior is a perfect anchor for designer George Lucas’ alluring set of authentic-looking post-and-lintel beams. On an open stage with dappled lighting (Dan Martin), we are thrust inside a 19^th century barn in rural Ireland. Pitch forks, like tridents, are mounted on the back wall next to book cases. Books scattered on the floor next to winnowing baskets or propped against crude-looking hand-hewn chairs seem out of place. One window, to our right, is mysteriously luminous; whereas the opposite window is in shadow. In the distance beyond a wide-open door upstage, mountains and hills fade into pastel, rosy-blue light. We are drawn into a country school of a special sort. This is a hedge-school, part of a miraculously effective Irish system of home-schooling.

Catchy fiddle, pipe and Dulcimer tunes set us up for a light-hearted mood. But this is August 1833 in Baile Beag, a.k.a. Ballybeg, (Gaelic for “Little Town”), County Donegal, at a time of growing unrest that makes this colonized setting unsettling.  On a haystack, Jimmy Jack (Stan Shulman) a scruffy-looking sixty-year-old, fluent in Latin and Greek, recites from Homer’s Odyssey, the first sign of resistance against speakers of English. Jimmy’s input is essential in that we later learn that he can swap Gaelic stories about the Herculean Irish hero Cuchulain as well. Center stage, Manus (Colin Smith) is teaching Sarah (Samantha Sheahan), who is hindered by a speech defect, how to say her name.

Throughout Translations we are reminded of the importance of “naming.” Names are proof of events, of existence. A crossroads is given the namesake of a man who drowned in a nearby well. If changed or Anglicized, the memory of a man disappears. Keeping personal history alive is the power of myth. Teaching each other the myths is a tradition, a gesture of resistance against oppressive rule from outsiders. The country locals are gathering in the barn for further enlightenment from their hedge-school master, Hugh O’Donnell (Kevin Adams), who doles out hope through his erudite lessons in Latin, Greek, and Homer’s classics that magically hold an Irish community together. O’Donnell, played with a dignified swagger by the incomparable Adams, later extrapolates by justifying his speaking for the Irish nation as a whole: “It is our response to mud cabins and a diet of potatoes; our only method of replying to…inevitabilities.”

Based on the past, the biggest inevitable is the British, “the elegant bunglers.” Two Redcoat soldiers arrive to chart maps and translate Irish Gaelic names into the King’s standard English. The local inhabitants are tightly knit by their native language. Translation is used as a weapon. For Captain Lancey, enacted by Daniel Lyons who reprises his no-nonsense role from 1997, the deeply-rooted Gaelic language is outlawed, not only for military reasons but also for control of the people’s minds-far more sinister. But ironically, Maire (Susan Marie Rhea), less madly in love with Gaelic-speaking Manus than he is with her, is a restless iconoclast rebelling against her own clan. She’s determined to assimilate and learn English. For her, translation means freedom to go to America.

Solid actors who are well-steeped enough in their respective roles to pull out all the stops yet shade the nuances, build the sense of injustice to more ominous tones. Doalty (Matthew Keenan) is the reporter of past atrocities and off-stage violence. O’Donnell’s two scholarly sons, Manus  and the pragmatic Owen (Jon Townson) are dynamic opposites. Once the British arrive, Owen, the suave, well-traveled brother , is the one who can translate from Gaelic to English and act as liaison between the Baile Beag natives and British Lieutenant Yolland, played sensitively by Peter Finnegan, who projects empathy with the conquered humans around him.  

During a school session in Gaelic (no need for sur-titles, the actors convey the Gaelic portions effectively in English), Bridget, (Erin Buchanan) pertly reminds us that the year 1832 marked the start of one of the inevitable consequences of conquest-an English-only national school system and the hedge-schools’ decline. It’s a tragic irony that’s implied in the characters’ devotion to the classics. During the Dark Ages when Ireland was stable while the European mainland was being plundered, the Irish scholarly monks translated and preserved the Greek and Latin classics that might otherwise have been lost to Irish culture and Western civilization forever. Here, in Translations, we are witnessing another form of British plunder.

But Friel, interestingly enough, is not taking sides or advocating a solution of violence or retaliation. In a highly charged moment, both actors, the radiant Susan Marie Rhea as Maire, and Peter Finnegan as Yolland, are stunning in their hesitant, tremulous love scene that serves as the plot’s turning point. Words fail. But Maire who speaks only Gaelic Irish and the British soldier who only grasps English, transcend cultural barriers, even though both are in personal peril.

Friel raises questions about irreconcilable differences between cultures; but clearly killing the innocent is not his answer. We need new ideas, says the school master, Hugh O’Donnell, whose memory lapses and drunken stupor from alcohol and Homer’s exalted lyrics show us how he’s losing a sense of the past. A struggle for national identity and survival has begun and a century of political strife looms. But that’s just one of the punch lines at the end.

• Running Time: 1:50 plus one 15 minute intermission.
• When: Thursdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m.; Sunday matinees at 2 p.m. through Saturday, May 17^th. Brunch at James Hoban’s Irish Restaurant, One Dupont Circle (5 minutes walk), and show special, Sundays, May 4 and 11 (Mother’s Day), $36. 
• Where: Church Street Theater, 1742 Church Street, N.W., Washington D.C., near Dupont Circle.
• Tickets: $30. $25 for students and seniors .  To order, call 703-892-0202 or email the box office.
• Info:  Visit the website.