The Stanford Summer Theater is running a Brian Friel festival, with the Irish playwright's Translations kicking things off this week. I had seen this work staged twice before: in its 1996 revival at The Abbey Theatre in Dublin and again with a touring company in New Haven a few years back. This production featured a mix of professionals and Stanford students and alums and held up quite well. It's a brilliant play, really, about the role of language in Ireland in 1833 as the British Empire is mapping the countryside, reshaping the landscape with anglicized names.
