Brian Friel’s drama of colonisation becomes a timeless study of change and adaptation in a taut new co-production between Belfast’s Lyric theatre and the Abbey, Dublin. Based on the mapping of Ireland’s landscape in the 1830s, Friel’s play has been performed all over the world since its premiere by Field Day in 1980. Director Caitríona McLaughlin highlights its universality, avoiding sentimentality, with designers Joanna Parker (set) and Paul Keogan (lighting) creating a strikingly abstract stage picture: a sloping ridge evoking a cottage roof against a summer night’s sky.
In Donegal, where place names are being translated into English for Ordnance Survey maps, the English soldiers tasked with this exercise are assisted by a local man. Owen (Leonard Buckley) mediates between them and the villagers, who speak Irish only. When Lieutenant Yolland (Aidan Moriarty) becomes enthralled by the Irish language and landscape, he is teased by Owen for his misty romanticism: “The first hot summer in 50 years and you think it’s Eden.”
