‘Translations’ Looks at Irish-Anglo Rifts

Brian Friel’s “Translations,” produced by Theatre Banshee at the Gene Bua Theatre, is set in 1833 Ireland, just before the potato famine that will devastate the country’s population.

Unwittingly poised on the brink of a double disaster, the Irish-speaking villagers of Ballybeg, who have stubbornly resisted learning the language of their British oppressors, are about to be forcefully anglicized.

Capt. Lancey (Joel Tatom) and Lt. Yolland (David Nevell) of the Royal Corps of Engineers are under orders to “standardize” existing maps of the area. Local-raised Owen (Eric Drachman) translates for the Brits, deliberately softening their imperialistic intentions in the process.

When Yolland falls in love with a local girl (Leslie Baldwin) and then mysteriously disappears, Lancey levies draconian reprisals against the village. Owen, whose schoolmaster father (Barry Lynch) and scholar brother (Pascal Marcotte) are swept up in the British incursion, must face his own complicity in their downfall.

Sean Branney’s direction, Sibyl Wickersheimer’s set and Laura Brody’s costumes invest Friel’s gripping drama with a rigorous authenticity. So do the actors, despite a few lapses in dialect. But Drachman plays Owen on one note, while Lynch misses the pathos of his drunken, doomed pedant. Nevell is both comical and moving as Yolland, the sensitive outsider.

* “Translations,” Gene Bua Theatre, 3435 W. Magnolia Blvd., Burbank. Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2 p.m. Ends Oct. 13. $12. (818) 380-7135. Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes.