In Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare famously asks, “What’s in a name?” He immediately answers his own question, saying, essentially, not much: “That which we call a rose/ By any other name would smell as sweet.”
Brian Friel couldn’t disagree more. In his 1980 play Translations, now being lovingly revived at off-Broadway’s Irish Rep, names are of paramount importance: they represent culture, tradition, even identity. In 1833 Baily Beag, aka Ballybeg (literally “small town”)—the fictional setting for most of Friel’s plays—in county Donegal, northwestern Ireland, the British are coming, literally: his Majesty’s government has dispatched soldiers to survey and make a new, more standardized, map of Ireland. In other words, anything too Irish-sounding or unpronounceable will be Anglicized. It’s a subtle way for Britain to bolster its stranglehold on Ireland.
Captain Lancey (Rufus Collins) and Lieutenant Yolland (Raffi Barsoumian) are in charge of the mission, but, as they speak no Irish, they’ve enlisted a former local resident, Owen (an appropriately slick Seth Numrich)—now a successful Dublin businessman—to be what he calls their “civilian interpreter.” As he tells his schoolmaster father, Hugh (Seán McGinley), his brother, Manus (Owen Campbell), and their students, “my job is to translate the quaint, archaic tongue you people persist in speaking into the King’s good English.” (Side note: All the Irish characters in Translations speak their lines in English; it’s simply understood that they’re speaking Irish.)
Never mind that Lancey and Yolland refer to their Irish-speaking coworker as Roland. “Isn’t it ridiculous? They seemed to get it wrong from the very beginning—or else they can’t pronounce Owen,” laughs Owen, much to Manus’ dismay. “Owen—Roland—what the hell. It’s only a name.” Or is it? For Manus’ nearly silent student Sarah (Erin Wilhelmi), saying “My name is Sarah” is akin to climbing a mountain.
At one point, Owen and Yolland get tripped up on Bun na hAbhann. “Bun is the Irish word for bottom. And Abha means river. So it’s literally the mouth of the river,” Owen explains. Yolland is baffled by Bun na hAbhann. “There’s no English equivalent for a sound like that,” he insists. Meanwhile, in the church registry it’s Banowen. Elsewhere it’s called Owenmore, but “Owenmore’s the big river at the end of the parish,” Owen says. “And in the grand jury lists it’s called—God!—Binhone!—wherever they got that. I suppose we could Anglicize it to Bunowen.” Their task—which Owen summarizes as “trying to denominate and at the same time describe that tiny area of soggy, rocky, sandy ground where that little stream enters the sea, an area known locally as Bun na hAbhann”—proves trickier than expected. Eventually they settle on Burnfoot, but Yolland, who has started to feel a connection with Ballybeg (née Baile Beag), sees his task for what it is: colonialism under the guise of cartography. “It’s an eviction of sorts,” he says. Owen tries to allay the lieutenant’s fears, insisting that “we’re standardizing those names as accurately and sensitively and we can.” Still, Yolland knows the truth: “Something is being eroded.”
Yolland has also begun to feel a connection with the local milkmaid, Maire (Mary Wiseman). After a local dance, they sneak away together to fumble their way through a seduction scene under the night sky. (Michael Gottlieb’s lighting sets a beautiful mood here.) For most of the scene, director Doug Hughes (Doubt) smartly keeps them at a distance, but you can sense something between them—a force that’s pulling them together. At a few points, they both say the only words they know the other will understand: George. Maire. George. Maire. A whole future in a name.
Translations opened Oct. 29, 2023, at Irish Repertory Theatre and runs through Dec. 3. Tickets and information: irishrep.org
