Brian Friel’s play ‘Translations,’ on stage at McCarter Theatre, reflects on Irish history, colonialism and the power of language.
By: Anthony Stoeckert
It’s impossible to discuss Brian Friel’s Translations without talking and thinking about language. The play is about language, how it defines us and what happens to a community when its language is taken away. It’s also written by a playwright who is very precise in the words he chooses and doesn’t want them changed.
"Brian writes so extraordinarily, the entirety of the play is within the script," says Garry Hynes, who is directing Translations at McCarter Theatre in Princeton, Oct. 8 to 29. The play will open on Broadway in January. "And your job is to understand, as precisely as you can, what it is he intended and to try to represent that in the live performance."
Sticking to the text doesn’t mean sitting back and watching the actors reading their lines. When asked, a few weeks before previews began, what the cast and crew were working on, Ms. Hynes simply says, "Everything."
Nor does staying true to the writer’s words mean that the actors don’t have the opportunity to bring their own insights and ideas.
"(Brian Friel is) a great present to an actor," says Niall Buggy, who plays Hugh in Translations and has appeared in other works by the playwright, including Aristocrats in New York and Uncle Vanya (adapted from Chekhov) in Dublin and Lincoln Center. "His work has sometimes been compared to Chekhov and I think there are similarities in his writing and in his development of character. I don’t know where these characters come from, from his head, from somewhere up in the air, but there’s an immense clarity about them sometimes that gives the actor the freedom to invest and invent."
Even though the goal is to follow the lines as Mr. Friel wrote them, Mr. Buggy says there are still choices, and discoveries, to be made.
"Sometimes you can be saying something and you can look at someone else and (think), ‘Oh my goodness, that means something,’" he says. "It’s of the moment, as all good work has to be of the moment."
Translations, which is being presented as part of Princeton University’s Irish Theatre Festival, takes place in the fictional town of Baile Beag/Ballybeg in County Donegal (the setting for most of Mr. Friel’s works), an Irish-speaking community, in 1883, when the royal engineers are mapping the area.
"In the course of doing that, they’re also standardizing the names of places," Ms. Hynes says. "And inevitably, standardizing means anglicizing. And basically Brian is exploring in the play, what are the consequences of language being taken away from people."
If this can make the play sound heady or challenging, the director stresses that Translations is more defined by its characters, story and humor.
"It’s written through a group of characters and the interaction between those characters and the British army," Ms. Hynes says. "One of the local women falls in love with a British solider, and that’s one of the driving points of the play." That relationship leads to a scene where the two communicate despite their inability to understand each other’s language. It’s a scene Ms. Hynes finds particularly powerful.
The play was the first production of Derry’s Field Day Company, which was established by Mr. Friel and the actor Stephen Rea (best known to American audiences for his role in The Crying Game) in 1980.
"It was a theater of ideas and a theater of poets," says Ms. Hynes. "It was a major event." Calling Mr. Friel one of the great living English language-writing playwrights, Ms. Hynes says Translations may be his best work, though others like Faith Healer make it tough to choose one as his very best. She’s also been in communication with Mr. Friel about the production.
This marks the first time Ms. Hynes will direct Translations, and it’s also her first time working at McCarter. She says she was contacted about directing an Irish play at McCarter as part of the Irish Theatre Festival and after several discussions, Translations was selected.
Ms. Hynes was born in Ballaghadereen County, Rosecommon, in Ireland, and became interested in theater when she joined the drama society while attending university in the 1970s. "I knew I couldn’t act, so I decided to direct and I’ve been doing it ever since," she says.
Some career highlights include starting the Druid Theatre Company, Ireland’s first professional company outside Dublin, and serving as the company’s director. She’s directed at Dublin’s famed Abbey Theatre since 1984 and served as the artistic director there in the 1990s. Ms. Hynes has also directed for the Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford-on-Avon and London, The Royal Exchange in Manchester, The Royal Court Theatre in London, Second Stage in New York and Dublin’s Gate Theatre.
Ms. Hynes shrugs off any suggestion of defining herself as a "woman director," though being the first woman to a win a Tony for directing (in 1998 for Martin McDonagh’s The Beauty Queen of Leenane) makes it impossible not to ask her about it.
"I don’t ever classify myself like that. I’m a director, I’m also a woman, that’s just part of the package," she says when asked if, as a woman, she brings something different to the play. "Brian writes wonderfully for women and he has written a most wonderful love story… My sensibility is my sensibility, and that’s determined by any number of things: who I am, where I’m from, the fact that I’m a woman and so on. But essentially I’m a director."
And what about being the first woman to win a Tony for directing?
"I find it hard to believe a woman had never won a Tony for her directing before," she says. "It’s just extraordinary because so many women have made such contributions to American theater, but those are the facts and I was lucky enough to be the one."
Nor does she alter the way she directs based on where she’s working, though you may think audiences around the world might have varying expectations from the theatrical experience.
"I would never see in any circumstances that I would direct a play (differently) from one place to another," she says. "I direct the play the best I can whether I’m in Tokyo, Dublin or Princeton."
"She’s very inventive as a director," says Mr. Buggy, who has worked with Ms. Hynes before. "She’s somebody actors can trust because I know that she has a complete devotion to Friel’s play. So she wants to do what is best for the play, it’s not what is best for her production. (Actually), it is eventually what is best for her production and the actors, but it starts with being about the play."
The director and the actors will be working on Translations into next year. Shortly after the McCarter run ends, preparations for New York will begin and the people involved expect the work to grow with every performance.
"That’s what theater is, it’s ongoing," Mr. Buggy says. "I’ve done plays for eight months and you have to find a way (to keep them growing). It’s never complete, the way life is never complete. You may do the same things every day but you do them differently."
So what does Ms. Hynes want the audience to take away from the hard work she’s putting into Translations?
"I hope they have an experience, that’s quite simply it," she says. "It’s such an extraordinary thing that a group of people pay to come into a darkened room and allow another group of people to act upon their imaginations, and I just hope they will."
Translations will be performed at McCarter Theatre, 91 University Place, Princeton,
Oct. 8-29. Performances: Oct. 8, 5:30 p.m., Oct. 10, 7:30 p.m., Wed.-Thurs. 7:30
p.m., Fri. 8 p.m., Sat. 3, 8 p.m., Sun. 2 p.m. Tickets cost $28-$48. For information,
call (609) 258-2787. On the Web: www.mccarter.org

