Return to Production  Translations (03/19/1995 - 04/09/1995)
New York Daily News: "Lost in 'Translations'"  Brian Friel's
"Translations," a parable about the impossibility of
understanding between the English and the Irish, is, I'm afraid,
easier to understand as a parable about the pitfalls of
translating London success to New York.  This production is
based on a successful recent London revival, of which a haunting
set, a powerful actor and an English director have been
imported. The  ongoing difficulties between England and Ireland
probably gave the play an  immediacy in London that it lacks
here.  Set in 1833 in rural Ireland, "Translations" presents the
British at first as a seemingly neutral force. British soldiers
have come to prepare maps in which ancient Gaelic place
names will be given English equivalents. The "natives," of
course, know the mapmaking will eventually have military
consequences.  The linguistic impasses the two nations face are
a poetic way to dramatize the deeper gulf that divides