A travelling theatre troupe came to Dublin this week, breathless and windswept, after a whistle-stop tour of the Outer Hebrides.
Playing at Theatre Space@The Mint, Aistriúcháin, an Irish-language version of Brian Friel's Translations, plays its last Dublin date tonight before it leaves for Belfast's Féile an Phobail.
The Irish-language version "sets the play in its realistic setting", said Gearóid Ó Cairealláin, founder of the Aisling Ghéar Theatre Company. It conveys "the brutality of the way the English language was forced on the Irish speakers", he said. "We wanted that edge of reality." The English soldiers speak their lines in English, he explained, but "it's not so much that a quarter of the text is in English, it's the effect of bringing home the situation today", he said, which "in many ways, Irish speakers actually live today". The play deals with the decline of the Irish language in Donegal in the 1830s.
"Tá a lán rudaí breise sa dráma," said Bríd Ó Gallchóir, director of the play. "Tá an comhlint idir an Gaeilge agus an Béarla an-soiléar."
Pól Mac Peanróis, an actor from Gortahork in Co Donegal, provided a simultaneous translation of the play, during the performance. "It's an opportunity for those who don't have any Irish to hear it," he said.
"Bíonn cuid mhaith dramaí Ghaeilge anseo," said Méabh Ní Loingsigh, DCU's Irish language officer."Ní bhíonn dramaí Ghaeilge in aon áit eile," a dúirt sí.
The play runs as part of Féile an Phobail from Tuesday to Saturday night next.