Where can I find a review of Translations by Brien Friel?

Answer 1

Hey Leighton,

First performed in 1980 in the Guildhall Theatre in Derry, Brian Friel’s Translations was one of the flagships of the Field Day Group. This was a gathering of writers and artists including actor Stephen Rea, poets Seamus Heaney and Tom Paulin, academic Seamus Deane, and playwright Friel. Their project was to reinvigorate the political consciousness of Irish literary arts with a respect for traditions of nation, self, and language which extended past the republican rhetoric of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Translations has since assumed the mantle of a classic of modern Irish theatre. In only twenty years it has already found its way into the education system. The current Abbey Theatre production is being accompanied by a series of educational workshops aimed at using it to discuss questions of "the potency of language as a way of communicating meaning, accommodating experience, and expressing cultural identity and values." Not only has the political atmosphere changed in the years since its first production (when its concern with nationality was easily read in the context of contemporary Northern Irish politics), but the play itself, it seems, has already found itself mired in context which threatens to overwhelm its value as a dramatic text.