Colin Morgan and Ciarán Hinds star in an exquisitely brooding revival of Brian Friel’s masterpiece
'Translations' returns to the National Theatre in October 2019. This review is from 2018.
Ropey ‘Macbeth’ aside, the National Theatre’s mercurial Olivier has been crushing it vis-à-vis revivals lately. Hot on the heels of ‘Follies’ and ‘Amadeus’ comes this fine take on the late Brian Friel’s 1980 masterpiece, ‘Translations’.
In a way, Friel’s play about a British Ordnance Survey expedition’s attempts to map and translate the place names of a rural slice of Donegal in 1833 is so rock solid that it’s tempting to think all director Ian Rickson needs to do is make sure his cast know their lines and point them in the right direction.
Its great conceit is a deceptively simple linguistic trick. As the play opens, in the hedge school run by intense, earnest teacher Manus (Seamus O’Hara) and his loquacious, self-mythologising father Hugh (Ciarán Hinds), we see a group of locals sitting around discussing Ancient Greek and Latin literature. Ten or so minutes in, it’s revealed that the ‘English’ they’re speaking is, in fact, Gaelic; when a contingent of British engineers led by Adetomiwa Edun’s Lieutenant Yolland show up, the entire cast continue to speak in English, but the two nationalities can’t understand each other (the Irish are further bemused that the British can’t speak Latin or Greek).
It is a brilliant idea: understated enough that Friel can use it to deftly tell a bilingual story without surtitles or whatnot, but much deeper in its symbolism. It’s poignant that the Irish characters are speaking in English because the language of the colonisers would go on to swallow these people whole in just a generation or two. It’s even more poignant that the British and Irish characters are technically speaking the same language but can’t understand one another – a perfect metaphor for the ongoing history of our two nations if ever there was one.
Friel has provided the special effects in the language; in a way, all a cast needs to do is not screw them up. This they surely don’t: Rickson’s revival is awash with talent, foremost Hinds as the shambolic but shamanic Hugh, and the charismatic Colin Morgan as Owen, whose burning intelligence and passionate love of language have driven him towards the British, not away, as he enthusiastically aids a mapping project whose deeper consequences he cannot predict. Edun is intensely likeable as a carefree, romantic Yolland, who falls hard for Donegal and Judith Roddy’s local lass Máire. (By the by, it’s interesting that Edun is the sole actor of colour in a production that doesn’t really feel colour-blind in casting – it might mean absolutely nothing, but there is perhaps a subliminal sense that it lends the character a distance from the colonising establishment).
Rickson and designer Rae Smith know that this is a play in which the text takes centre stage. What they have brought to the table, with their detailed, sepia-toned production, is a feeling of intimacy. The temptation with the Olivier is to make everything MUCH BIGGER; here, in fact, it feels as personal as a performance in the Dorfman, the action virtually all taking place within a few square metres at the front of the stage. Smith uses the space to create a sense of rural Ireland’s expanse, but she limits it too – a constant veil of mist conceals the height of the ceiling. As with much of Rickson’s work, the ambience is stunning. When the mood starts to darken following Yolland’s unexplained disappearance, words become punctuated by a slow symphony of dripping rain, while subtle drones sour the atmosphere. It’s rarely flashy but always effective.
There is one major directorial intervention, brief but unmissable. Right at the end, the backlights turn into watchtowers with black-clad, machine-gun-toting soldiers atop them, in a clear allusion to The Troubles. Is it a bit on the nose? Perhaps, but then, as Brexit threatens to drive a fresh wedge between Britain and Ireland, it would be a bit toothless not to make the allusion. In any case, Friel’s exquisite, diamond-cut play can most certainly take it.
