Word: friel
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...Brian Friel...
Scheduled to open on Broadway in less than a month, Brian Friel's Translations hopes to follow the success of his Tony Award-winning Dancing at Lughnasa. But the Boston production touches the shallowest of emotions, proving once again that star-power does not necessarily translate into outstanding theater...
...Friel implies this lighthearted gloss constitutes not a denial of the reality, but just as necessary a component. Indeed, he begs the question: isn't the perception just as, if not more, real than the reality? The sisters' uncle, Father Jack, embodies this sentiment. For 25 years, Father Jack worked as a Catholic missionary in Africa, earning himself a folk-hero status in the ardently religious community. Finally, his superiors send him home, ostensibly due to his poor health. But when he settles in with his nieces to recuperate, it gradually dawns on them that he was ejected from...
...Friel undermines the superficial gloss of each character. At the same time, he reveals the gradually deteriorating status of the Mundy family itself. But he never indicates which aspect is more real--which interpretation more true. The script embraces self-contradiction with open arms...
...that respect, the Law School's production fall short of the text. For director Dana Kirchman presents Dancing at Lughnasa as a sort of Irish Decline and Fall: a tragicomic descent from the sublime to the ridiculous. But Friel's play follows no such forced structure. The tragedy and the comedy are both equally present and equally real from the beginning. Indeed, what is disturbing about Dancing at Lughnasa is not the depressing tale of the Mundys' decline; rather it is the slapdash casserole of elation and despair that makes up their everday lives...