Translations (The Nash)

I didn’t used to think this but now I can’t wait for Norris’ 5 year term to come to an end. You need someone in this role with real vision and flair. You can make mistakes etc but his Macbeth could have been a very expensive school production. No amount of 5 star reviews will make me change my mind about this. It is too important a job and he is not ready for it.

Anyone any idea how they swap between the sets for MacB and this? I haven't seen the former, but the Translations set must be a huge job to move, store and reset.

I was a bit left of centre and it was fine. There's a bit of action from a staircase on the left wall and I suppose you'd be seeing the actors' backs if you were well to the left.

I enjoyed this but am a bit mystified about some of the really strong reviews - 5 stars from the Guardian for example. There are some great scenes but others that just drag. Generally the cast were all very strong but some of the characters are a lot more interesting than others, I was always engaged when Owen, Máire & Yolland were on stage but less so at other times.

I'm also not in love with the ending which felt more that the play just stopped.

I found the subject matter very engaging, though it did make my mind wander from the immediate action in places. The opening scene needed speeding up, and yes - it just sort of ended. I think the director's added 'full stop' was misjudged.

I didn't like the ending this production gave to Brian Friel's play. It was forced and not even accurate in the current news terms of an issue it raised visually. So it seemed a melodramatic note to close what was written by Friel in Translations as a more thoughtful piece of work.

I missed it too...I saw the lights but not the other stuff so I was completely baffled. I was exhausted the night I watched this.

Yes, but to make this all about one specific one was so reductive when the play seemed to give us so many - the imperialism of Latin, the Roman conquest (alluded to, I think, with a girl calling the soldiers centurions?), the Christian and later the Roman Catholic church (neither native to Ireland, but still holding power especially over women's bodies until the 21stc), the various peoples who have colonised the British isles and left their marks on the language - the word 'burn' being substituted for Irish is itself no longer a common one as London norms have replaced Celtic or Viking-influenced regional 'dialect' words, the empires that have held power of India, the spread of Enlightenment ideas and in their wake the empire of Napoleon, seen by some in this play as potentially liberating but also bound up with mass bloodshed (Robespierre's line "no one loves armed missionaries" sprang to mind), the European conquest of the Americas which included the British and Irish diaspora but which was devastating to the First Nation peoples whose place names often survive where they have not, the power of a patriarch over their children, the power of a tribe to (violently) prevent marrying out ...

Well, when I read the play it doesn’t seem to end with a whimper. It is a very powerful piece of writing. I’m not sure that I read the play as suggesting that cultural appropriation leads to complete domination but rather that it is an act of violence in and of itself, part of the weaponry of colonialism.

Well. I know someone who goes weak at the knees for an Irish accent, she would have been in heaven here. They're everywhere!

The set is really rather smashing, especially at the back with the swirling mist wafting about and while I enjoyed the play, I think I preferred bits of it rather than the whole thing. Colin Morgan was good and likeable especially when he was being funny (and the fan next to me was BESIDE HERSELF when he first walked on, she was jigging about like she was auditioning for Riverdance), I liked Seamus O'Hara as Manus (his big scene in the second act was really rather touching and I got a bit of that mist in my eye) and Dermot Crowley and Jimmy Jack, I loved the staging of the approach of the British soldiers over the hill and the flirting between Judith Roddy (last seen dusting herself off in flour during 'Knives in Hens') and Adetomiwa Edun as Maire and Yolland was delightfully funny too although . . .


Strangely though, all the way through the show I though Colin Morgan's accent was the worst one and that he was struggling with it at times. Then I realised that he's actually from Northern Ireland so it must have been his real accent. Oops.

All in all, it was entertaining enough but not one for the DUP annual day out though.