Theatre

Sara Keating: Assured direction ensures nothing is lost in the Abbey’s Translations

The updating of Brian Friel’s 1980 masterpiece is as solid an embodiment of it as you are ever likely to see

Marty Rea and Zara Devlin in Translations by Brian Friel, directed by Caitríona McLaughlin on the Abbey stage ahead of a tour to Lime Tree Theatre in Limerick, Town Hall Theatre in Galway and An Grianán in Donegal. Picture: Ros Kavanagh

Brian Friel’s remarkable, multi-layered play Translations premiered in 1980, a critical moment during the period of political and civil turmoil known in true Irish understatement as the Troubles. Produced by Field Day Theatre Company in the war-torn city of Derry, it was both an intellectual and practical act of bringing two divided communities together to think about the cultural legacy of British colonisation of Ireland and the ways in which they might come together in ...