Abbey, DublinBrian Friel's great achievement in Translations is to play with audience expectations as easily as he plays with words. A drama of colonisation based on the mapping of Ireland's landscape in the 1830s becomes a supple meditation on language and identity rather than a lament for a lost idyll. While it has a tender central love scene, it is anti-romantic; there are moments of pathos and pain, yet it is not…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:00PM on July 19, 2011