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Traditore, traduttore at the Hilberry

By Robert W. Bethune

Irish plays like Brian Friel's "Translations" have great characters.
Hugh O'Donnell runs a tiny school, devoting himself to giving backwoods 19th century Irish people the gift of Homer and Virgil. His older son Manus helps run the school. JimmyJack is Hugh's best pupil, a man almost lost in the world of Homer. This pastoral life is disrupted by the arrival of Owen, Hugh's younger son, and a British military mapping unit led by an efficient British officer, Captain Lancey. Owen, a civilian translator, works with Lt. Yolland to Anglicize place names for the maps. Yolland falls hard for Maire Chatach. Manus is in love with Maire, but she returns Yolland's feelings. Yolland vanishes; the British threaten to shoot livestock and level houses unless he is found.
Friel focuses on language, communication and culture. The Irish are materially poor and culturally rich; the British are the opposite. The mapmaking helps destroy culture and history by erasing names. Yolland feels guilty, which doesn't stop him; he is the romantic colonizer, gushing admiration for local culture and admiration for the local woman. He's guileless about it, which makes him charming. Owen's conflicted attitudes don't prevent him from taking British money. To translate is to betray.
The weak point in Friel's play is the story. We never learn why Maire prefers Yolland to Manus, what actually happens to Yolland, whether the village gets destroyed, why Lancey can order barbarities. Hugh and Manus have hopes of landing jobs with better schools. Those hopes die, but what happens to the men then? Friel treats his plot as a way to display his characters and ideas. We lose a satisfying story.
The acting is the best I have seen at the Hilberry this year. Benny Lumpkin Jr. gives Lancey unvarnished grim clarity. Caroline Price is touching as Sarah, who almost cannot speak. There is a very funny scene between Megan Callahan's Maire and Mike Boynton's Yolland; the two communicate their feelings without common language. Hugh, Manus, JimmyJack and Doalty, played by Christopher Corporandy, James Kuhl, Christopher Bohan and Michael Ogden, are dreamy, emotional, believable characters, intriguing and surprising.
Lavinia Moyer's direction keeps complexities of culture and communication natural yet trenchant. The pacing is relaxed, but almost too relaxed; my attention wandered. Moyer adds linguistic layers by having Dan McDougall and Michele Tocco shadow major characters while signing in American Sign Language. Signers are often used as mere human subtitle projectors, but not here; Moyer skillfully allows them to relate to each other and to the rest of the characters. However, one cannot avoid the distraction inherent in their presence.
Costuming and lighting by John Woodland and Andrew Morehouse are lovely and atmospheric, as is the setting by Brad Darvas, except for a loud yellow element of some sort center stage – the sightlines are too flat to see it well. The word "Donegal" gets splashed across the front of the apron. We really would have figured that out on our own.

(FOR "REVIEW BOX")
REVIEW:
'Translations'
Hilberry Theatre, 4743 Cass, Detroit. Plays in repertory through May 19. Tickets: $15-$28. For information: 313-577-2972 or http://www.hilberry.com.

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