Translations - Review

National Theatre, London

****

Written by Brian Friel

Directed by Ian Rickson

Colin Morgan

The National Theatre presents a gorgeous revival of Brian Friel’s Translations, a sweet play set in the wee parish of Baile Beag, Ireland, in 1830, just before the infamous potato famine and during the Anglicisation on the country. The plentiful foresight and the vibrant exploration of the beauty and challenges of language make it a play to catch this summer. Ian Rickson directs, with language quite rightly at the forefront, as Irish and English characters come to wordy blows with Colin Morgan’s Owen translating between the tongues. With most of the spoken Irish translated, it is left to the performers to make it abundantly clear just who has understood what, and to drive the play’s plentiful humour home. 

Owen, a worldly character for the time having lived six years in Dublin, returns home to a village that quite simply has not changed at all.  (Itself a sensation shared, quite possibly,  by every Londoner in the audience who heads “home” to rural parts every few months). He brings with him two British military cartographers, the uptight Captain Lancey (Rufus Wright) and the more fanciful Lieutenant George Yolland (Adetomiwa Edun). Yolland is the typical Englishman abroad - incapable of handling his drink and immediately setting his sights on the local female talent, going on to create an unlikely corner of a love triangle with Owen’s lame brother Manus (a gentle portrayal from Seamus O’Hara) and the impressively ambitious Maire, played by Judith Roddy. With eyes on a boat across the Atlantic, Maire's wish is to escape calloused hands at the next harvest.

The two officers have come to survey the land for the six-inch-to-the-mile map being drawn up, and in so doing to Anglicise the renaming of local landmarks and disrupting the blissful peace of the locale. The brothers’ father is the drunken scholar and teacher Hugh, portrayed gruffly by Ciarán Hinds, who spends most of the play trading Greek poetry and myths with Dermot Crowley’s Jimmy Jack Cassie who steals the show with a tearful confession towards the end of the second act.

Translations’ designs are by Rae Smith, herself theatre’s go-to rural scenescape guru of the moment, having only just created the shattered idyll for the Bridge Theatre’s Nightfall a mile or so down the Thames. Smith's designs clearly evoke the countryside's delightful chaos, suggesting  world that is akin to intruding upon a remote local pub in the middle of nowhere. A place where there are in-jokes and relationships only born out of  those who’ve known each other throughout their lives. Uplit lighting by National regular Neil Austin and violin filled morose sound by Ian Dickinson complete the eerie, mist-filled staging. 

It is rare to find a show so good-natured and yet ominous and academic, all at the same time. Come for the raucous humour by the comedy pairings of Aoife Duffin’s Bridget and Laurence Kinlan’s Doalty. Stay for the dramatic, dirty colonialism and the lesson in the pros and cons of multilingualism. Beautiful and daring, go see it.

Runs until 11th August

Reviewed by Heather Deacon

Photo credit: Catherine Ashmore

Great Britain - Review - National Theatre

National Theatre, London

****

Written by Richard Bean
Directed by Nicholas Hytner

Billie Piper

One suspects that the biggest item on the production budget of the National Theatre’s Great Britain, opening last night on the South Bank, will have been the fees of the libel lawyers hired to meticulously scrutinise Richard Bean’s work. Barely was the ink dry on the Old Bailey phone hacking verdicts last week, when the National unveiled the production, the development of which has been kept under the tightest of wraps, lest it influence said trials. The play examines the incestuous relationship between government, press and police and although Bean may well be the nations's latest favourite funny man, as he rides the success of his One Man, Two Guvnors, fans of that blockbuster (also Hytner directed) be warned, there is no eye-watering comeddia dell’arte slapstick to be found here. Rather, Great Britain reminds one of TV's long lost Spitting Image, with gloriously recognisable lampoons of some deeply uncomfortable truths.

Bean's text offers nothing that is revelatory. Billie Piper puts in a cracking turn as Paige Britain, News Editor of The Free Press, the country's biggest selling red-top tabloid paper. Where many of the play's characters are blindingly obvious caricatures of the famous, hers is perhaps the best dramatic creation of the night, a manipulative Chorus at times speaking directly to the audience, elsewhere to be found fellating her way up the greasy poles of male-dominated legislature and law enforcement.

Some of Bean's gags are en pointe, others crash to earth in moments of blinding obviousness, yet amongst this witty yet ultimately depressing slice of modern life, there are some standout performances alongside Piper. Robert Glenister is a monstrously monstering Editor, ultimately promoted to spin doctor at No 10, Andrew Woodall is a chillingly beliveable Head of PR for the Metropolitan Police whilst Aaron Neil’s cop, Commissioner Kassam is a cracking performance though only of a thinly sketched out bumbling stereotype. The media-mogul who owns The Free Press is Paschal O’Leary a self-made Irish billionaire and whilst Dermot Crowley delivers am entertaining performance, neither he nor the play are a patch on Anthony Hopkins’ grotesque Lambert Le Roux that bestrode the Olivier stage in David Hare’s Pravda, some 30 years ago.

Bean's writing takes aim at nearly all of the fourth estate. Paige Britain makes no bones in admitting her rag is an “end of the pier” show for the nation, whilst other recognisable broadsheets include a sniggeringly titled The Dependent and best of all, The Guardener (sic) whose strapline is "We think, so you don’t have to". We laugh at the buffoonery and manipulative chicanery, whilst Neil’s performance as the first man ever to be tazered on stage is a cracker.

The dark side of this abused democracy is here too. We learn of an innocent man lynched because of a misleading story in The Free Press, we see a story about Jimmy Savile spiked by the newsroom, and a good cop kills himself as the corruption of his moral fibre sees blind justice led astray. That the (fictional) abducted young twins however, whose phones are hacked by Britain’s team, are called “Mills” is crass. Don’t the Dowlers deserve any respect? This name should be changed forthwith.

Great Britain deserves plaudits for its immediacy, relevance and outstanding stagecraft, that sees the nation’s leading theatre assemble a fine company amidst stunning sets and technical wizardry and challenge head on three of the country’s most powerful institutions. It might not be the National’s best, but it’s a damn good play nonetheless. Catch it if you can. 

Now booking until August 23rd