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Photo by Don Kellogg

Thursday, January 18, 2007

Translations

Playright Brian Friel shows up on Broadway once again (Faith Healer -2006). A well performed work, albeit slow and a bit boring and a bit of a dirge. A fine cast, all unknown (to me anyway), did an excellent job at staging the new work.

I mean how could a show with a stage covered in dirt, dirty looking actors, and the British army come out with a happy ending? Just a little hint. It can't. And it didn't.

The title, Translations, comes from the fact that the actors, although speaking to us in English, are really supposed to be speaking in Gaelic (Irish). It becomes most obvious when the British Army shows up and must try to communicate with the locals. They are "mapping" the small towns in Ireland. The Irish are proud to speak their own language and have their own culture on the beautiful isle, but are not very well educated and one can soon tell what the British army is bound to do. The proud are doomed to fall.