"Translations". Pilch
There are no Gaelic songs in Brian Friel's script for Translations . But in director Kate Burke's deeply resonant production at the Pilch, the almost non-verbal character Sarah sings twice, in haunting, solo renditions of Sean-nós songs. Ancestral and intimate, her interludes mourn for the days before English colonisation. Set (like so many Friel plays) in the quiet community of Baile Beag in 1833, Translations captures a moment in time: the eradication of Irish place-names by the colonising English army. The folk of Baile Beag aren't simple - they learn Ancient Greek and Latin in their local hedge school. But they don't speak the language of conquest, English, and Friel's play examines the erosion of identity through Anglicisation, and the silencing of Irish culture through brutal repression. Sarah (played with openness and clarity by Becky Devlin) is almost totally mute. She's a symbol of the paralysis wrought in Ireland by colonial domination. But with the ...
