Translations runs 2 hours and 15 minutes, including a 15-minute intermission.

Late seating and re-entry are at the discretion of house management and are not guaranteed.

The use of cameras, video recorders, audio recorders and/or any other type of recording device during a performance is strictly prohibited.

About the Play

• Brian Friel was called “the finest Irish dramatist of his generation” by The Guardian. His other famous plays include Philadelphia, Here I Come!, Faith Healer, and Dancing at Lughnasa.
• Baile Beag, the town where the play takes place, is a fictional one that Brian Friel set many of his plays in. The town is located in Donegal, a rugged and remote county in the far northwest of Ireland.
• The play is set in 1833, three decades after the Act of Union brought Ireland into the United Kingdom, and twelve years before the start of the Great Famine.
• Most of the Irish characters only speak their native Irish, and the British characters only speak English. Although the play is presented in entirely in English, the difficulty the British and Irish have in understanding one another is at the core of the story.
• The character of Hugh is a hedge school master. Hedge schools were informal classrooms held outdoors or in unused barns at a time when it was illegal for Catholics to teach young people.
• Captain Lancey and Lieutenant Yolland, members of the Corps of Royal Engineers, are in Donegal as part of the Ordnance Survey, a British effort to map Ireland in detail.