'A wonderful piece of literature'

'A wonderful piece of literature'

By CHRISTOPHER POTTER

NEWS ARTS WRITER

PREVIEW

Quoth Jim Moran in a Performance Network press release on the theater’s latest production: “Translations’ is easily the best-written play I have ever read. . .Really?  Better than anything else that’s rolled down the dramatic chute during humanity’s last few millenia?

“Well. . .” amends director Moran, Irish smile twinkling, “let’s make that the best-written modern play. I don’t want to be jousting with Shakespeare and Aristophanes,” he laughs.

Even so, that leaves a heck of a lot of competition for “Translations” playwright Brian Friel, whose 1980 play (which drew raves in London) makes its Ann Arbor debut Friday evening at Performance Network. “Well, I’m a little prejudiced,” admits Moran, “in that I’m a fan of the Irish theater. I’ve been directing one Irish play a year (at Detroit’s Attic Theater and Irish Festival) for the past seven or eight years, so it’s become kind of a tradition.”

Of that lot, “Translations” is Moran’s clear-cut favorite: “It’s simply a wonderful piece of literature. Friel is a brilliant and touching writer, probably the most popular internationally known Irish writer. In such a well-written show, I think the director’s job is to cast it. set the parameters, then get out of the way.”

On paper, “Translations” does read like a mini-gem. Set in 1833, Friel’s tragi-comedy depicts colonial England’s two-fold program to Anglicize a conquered Irish nation, specifically as it effects a small, peaceable Northern Irish community. London’s linguistic approach included the imposition of English-speaking schools upon a Gaelic-speaking populace trained in the informal schooling of “hedge” (outdoor) schools, and through the de-juicing of Gaelic road and village names into drab English equivalents.

The tragedy of being bullied out of one’s own heritage is implicit amidst “Translations” generally droll antics. “The undertone is very grim,” agrees Moran. “Gaelic culture is thousands of years old, going back to the ancient ties of Celtic tribes to Rome. But the beauty of Friel as a playwright is his ability to blend comedy and tragedy together and make them work.”

Says Performance Network's Kathy Millar: “(The play’s) humor is in the language the characters use, and the way they relate to each other. Even though it takes place in 1833 in another land, the humor is very real to us now. It’s earthy humor, and the words are so beautiful. They talk about potatoes, they talk about a blight coming, and you can almost smell the earth.”

So authentically rustic is Friel’s writing that “Translations” seems straight out of the age of Synge and O’Casey. That’s no accident, says Moran: “Half the Irish plays take place on the same set. The set for ‘Translations’ is the same set for ‘Playboy of the Western World,’ minus the pub. We used the same set for a Yeats play two years ago. Most of the authors are writing about the poor, rural west side of Ireland, where they don’t have split-level homes. So here’s Brian Friel, 80 years later, using a lot of the same kinds of jokes, same kinds of setups.”

As such, Moran thinks Friel is one playwright even the Irish can agree on. “Nearly everybody likes Friel, because the on the one hand he appeals to the traditionalists with his use of traditional images, themes and characters. He obviously has a love of the old Irish culture. And yet most of his plays are very modern.

“One thing,” he adds, “the Irish agree on almost unanimously is that the early history of Ireland and England was an outrage. So this is a play that appeals to everybody.” Even so, “This is not a political play, it’s a comedy. You could be oblivious to Irish culture or history, and still get a good laugh from the show. Because the humor’s in the interplay of things you recognize in yourself all the time.”

JIM MORAN... 'Translations' director

Translations' will play at Performance Network Friday through Sunday, June 7-9, and Thursday through Sunday June 13-16 and 20-23. Curtain for all shows is 8 p.m. For ticket information, call 663-0681.