Described as a 'masterpiece of boundless grace' by a leading Boston theater critics, Translations by Irish playwright Brian Friel was a big hit in Boston in winter 1983. Presented by Huntington Theatre, Translations ran at the Boston University Theater at 264 Huntington Avenue from January 13-30, 1983.
It was Friel's 14th play and solidified his reputation as one of the most innovative and accomplished Irish playwrights in Ireland's storied literary tradition.
Theater critic Kevin Kelly, writing in The Boston Globe, called Translations "a profound play of great beauty, rich in language and thought, and, in its piercing reach into Ireland's past, stunning in its self-fulfilling prophecy. It is a clear-cut masterpiece."
Critic Joyce Kulhawik called the production "A beautiful, eloquent and spirited piece of work by the Huntington Theatre."
Born in Killyclogher, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland on January 9, 1929, Friel was raised in the City of Derry, his father's home town. He was a pupil at the acclaimed St. Columb's Secondary School in Derry, attended by other literary figures including Seamus Heaney and Seamus Deane and by musicians Phil Coulter and Paul Brady.
Friel sets Translations takes place in 1833 in the fictional town of Baile Beag (small town) in County Donegal, where many of his plays were set. Under the British scheme called the Ordinance Survey of Ireland, English surveyors and solders turned up to survey the entire island as a way of updating land valuations and taxation. In Friel's plot, it was also an insidious way for the British to replace all Gaelic place names with English ones.
In 1995 Translations came to the Colonial Theatre in Boston with actors Brian Dennehy and Dana Delaney.
A number of Friel's plays were performed in Massachusetts over the years. In 1990, actress Kate Burton performed lead in Friel's play, the Aristocrats, at the Huntington Theatre, and in 1991, Nora Hussey directed Lovers: Winners & Losers at the Merrimack Repertory Theatre in Lowell. In 1996, Sugan Theatre produced Freedom of the City, while the Brandeis University Department of Theater Arts presented Dancing at Lughnasa. Then in 1997, the Gloucester Stage Company produced Faith Healer.
Friel was often compared to other Irish playwrights such as George Bernard Shaw, but he deferred the compliment by replying, "These were all Irish dramatists who went over and acquired an English voice so they could be more acceptable to English people," according to a recent story by Ed Power in the Irish Times, which continued, "For Friel, the only approval worth having was that of his own countrymen and women."
In addition to his prolific writing, Friel was also co-founder with actor Stephen Rea of Field Day, founded in 1980 in Derry as "a cultural and intellectual response to the political crisis in Northern Ireland."
Friel died on October 2, 2015 and is buried in Glenties, Donegal, where his mother was from. His papers are collected at the National Library of Ireland.
For more about Irish cultural activities, visit IrishMassachusetts.com.
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