[In the review below, Rich states that Translations "has something profound to say about how words can determine the fates of ordinary people, nations and even centuries of history," but he faults the play's uneven structure and lack of depth in some characters.]

It's not big news that Brian Friel, the Irish playwright, can write some of the most beautiful language to be heard in the contemporary theater. But in his new play, Mr. Friel has taken his love of words further still. Language is not just the dramatic currency of Translations—it is also the play's subject. What's more, the playwright has elevated his esthetic passion to a matter of life-and-death importance. Though Translations is a manifestly uneven piece of theater, it has something profound to say about how words can determine the fates of ordinary people, nations and even centuries of history.

The people of Translations, which opened last night at the Manhattan Theater Club, are peasants whose "ostentation of language is lacking in their material lives." They are residents of the tiny Irish hamlet of Baile Beag in 1833. It is four years after the Catholic Emancipation, and a contingent of now-friendly British redcoats has arrived for a seemingly benign task. New maps are to be drawn up of the countryside; Irish place names are to be translated into "standardized" English.

What does this mean for the lowly farmers of Baile Beag? On the surface, not much. This is, ostensibly, a good time for the Irish. Under the new laws of tolerance, they can worship in freedom. They no longer have to seek an education in their clandestine "Hedge Schools," but will soon be able to attend new, modern schools being built by the state. If the British want to rename every hill and dale, if they want to Anglicize the local language, that seems a small price to exact for the benefits they are giving the Irish in return.

As the evening progresses, it rapidly becomes clear that this price is not small at all. Translations consists of a series of homely anecdotes in which the townsfolk, now attending the final sessions of their outmoded hedge school, realize that by losing their language, they are facing "an eviction of sorts." As the boozy old schoolmaster (Barnard Hughes) explains in one of Mr. Friel's most moving lines, "Civilizations can be imprisoned in a linguistic con-tour that doesn't match the language of fact."

Not everyone sees the Anglicization of Ireland as a cause for alarm, however. Even the schoolmaster, a proud literary nationalist, has gladly accepted an invitation to run the new English-speaking school that will supersede his informal classroom of 35 years. Though one of his sons (Jarlath Conroy) plans to resist the new regime, the other (Stephen Burleigh) has signed on with the invading British as a translator. One of his adult students, Maire (Ellen Parker), views the Irish language as "a barrier to progress" and plans, in any case, to leave her homeland forever for America. Her fellow pupils—who range from a nearly mute farm girl (Valerie Mahaffey) to an aged O'Caseyesque barroom bard (Jake Dengel)—hardly know what all the fuss is about.

But a society is changing, and Mr. Friel limns the upheavals with intimate humor. In the evening's most inspired scene, two erstwhile cross-cultural lovers exchange intimacies without comprehending a word the other is saying. The soon-to-emigrate Maire has fallen for one of the British soldiers, Lieutenant Yolland (Daniel Gerroll), because she loves the sound of his foreign speech. She doesn't under-stand that Yolland is the one soldier who disapproves of his Government's mission; he loves the sound of Maire's speech and wants to settle with her in Ireland. As these two try to establish their doomed courtship without a common language; they somehow convince themselves that they are meeting on common ground. But there is no common ground. Their linguistic comedy of errors emblematizes the gap that has set even peace-craving British and Irish apart for generations.

As is frequently the case with Mr. Friel, this play's failures are of a structural nature. Translations flounders about at the outset of Act I, as the students arrive for lessons at their musty barn of a classroom (well designed by Kate Edmunds). Act III trails off into an underwritten apocalypse. The potentially wrenching relationships among the schoolmaster and his two sons are only vaguely sketched in; the minor students are also ill-defined.

Under the direction of the Abbey Theater's artistic director, Joe Dowling, some worthy actors, Lauren Thompson, Sam McMurray and Miss Mahaffey, fail to bring much coloration—or, in some cases, convincing accents—to the smaller roles. In some of the richer parts, the performances range from the uninspired (Mr. Burleigh and Miss Parker) to the inept (Mr. Dengel).

Luckily, the remainder of the cast is helpful indeed. Mr. Gerroll, last seen in David Hare's Knuckle at the Hudson Guild, is sweet, even charismatic as the British soldier who makes the tragic error of losing his heart to a hostile land. Mr. Conroy's bitter son, whose cronish, limping posture expresses his inner sorrow, is pitiful when he dis-covers that he can only protest the English impotently—with "the wrong gesture in the wrong language."

Mr. Hughes is especially exciting; it's unfortunate that he now leaves Translations until April 25 to fulfill a film commitment. His rustic schoolmaster is no retread of his cuddly Irish patriarch in Hugh Leonard's Da. Wearing a motheaten frock coat and pants that seem to be woven of peat moss (designed by David Murin), he wanders dazedly about quoting the classics, stealing swigs from a flask and vainly trying to accommodate himself to the "inevitabilities" of his country's future. Funny as he is, Mr. Hughes always turn his eyes sadly downward, as if he's surveying the defeated landscape of his own soul.

Like so many other elements in Translations, this school-master, too, could be more expansively written; the part is not as large as its importance to the drama. Yet it's hard to complain too angrily. Though one wishes that Mr. Friel's follow-through fully matched his intentions here, mere are far worse playwriting sins than leaving the audience hungry for more.