The Stage

Radio review

Published Monday 6 September 2010 at 14:50

Visitors to Dublin’s Writers Museum who aren’t familiar with the richness and breadth of Irish writing are often astounded - not least by the fact that authors and playwrights they may have thought of as English are actually Irish.

The English language may have been pressed upon the Irish, but they have responded by arguably trumping Brits at their own game.

But tragedy rather than triumphalism is the keynote of Translations, Brian Friel’s play about language, communication and imperialism. A fixture on school syllabuses more or less since it was written in 1980, its lyrical, literate and achingly sad dialogue jumps off the page, but it is in production that the intense beauty of its language is revealed.

It was conceived as the inaugural production of Derry’s The Field Day Theatre Company, founded by Friel and Stephen Rea as an artistic forum for Irish issues.

To mark that 30th anniversary, R4 commissioned a new production of the play which, with its aural delights, was already well suited to radio, and, in Michael Duke’s adaptation, is a model of clarity.

The play’s conceit is that the characters who convene in a small Donegal village in 1833 are speaking different languages. The locals use Irish (or Gaelic, as it is more commonly called in the UK), as well as bursts of Latin and ancient Greek; the English soldiers, here to draw up maps of Ireland and in the process anglicise place names, speak only their native tongue.

Some characters, like Owen (Eugene O’Hare), who has returned to his birthplace to assist the cartographers, straddle both worlds, culturally and linguistically.

In this dazzling production there was never a second when it was not clear which language was being spoken, although it was all rendered in English.

One of the outstanding scenes was when Lieutenant Yolland (Samuel Barnett, in impassioned form) and local girl Maire (Eileen Walsh, practically on fire) performed a love duet in their own tongues. Although neither could speak each other’s language, they revelled in the strange sounds and an intuitive understanding, in a wonderful interpretation of Friel’s point that communication is about more than the rigidities of language.

Yolland has fallen in love with Ireland and mourns the redolent names turned into English. In a scene of grim symmetry, the names are later translated back into Irish in an announcement of the places destined to be razed to the ground when the English seek revenge against an Irish uprising.

Pedagogue Hugh (Gerard McSorley) leads his students through a gymnastic display of languages, ancient and modern, while old Jimmy Jack, played by Dermot Crowly in a tender synthesis of alcoholism and lyricism, decides that of all Greek goddesses, Athene is the girl for him and he must speak to her father, Zeus, forthwith.

Directed with subtle verve by Kirsty Williams, this was a production whose epitaph must surely be “Ni tir gan teanga” (without a language, you have no country).

Linguistic comedy was just one of the devices used by Nick Mohammed In Bits, in a series of one-off comic plays starring some of his favourite comic creations.

He opened with his robbery-squad detective taking witness statements, lurching off at hilarious tangents and turning officiousness into an art form. This was cerebral slapstick of a high order - and it was very funny.

As was Gill Adams’ Big Pies, which charted the romantic convergence of two losers in life and love (George Costigan and Katy Wix). Underpinning the jolly rumbustiousness of her witty dialogue and Beryl Cook-style creations (apart from Steffan Rhodri’s cameo as a grumpy pensioner) was a moving melancholia.

Translations, R4, Saturday, September 4

Nick Mohammed In Bits, R4, Tuesday, August 31

Big Pies, R4, Friday, September 3

Moira Petty