Friel’s Translations: An Inquiry into the Disappearance of Lieutenant George Yolland

Abstract

In their 1996 study, Post-Colonial Drama: Theory, Practice, Politics, Helen Gilbert and Joanne Tompkins include a brief discussion of Brian Friel’s 1980 play, Translations. They focus on the act of translation itself to show the dynamics of power operative throughout the play. But their dramatic analysis is confined to Act 1 and the burden of the argument centres on the go-between Owen’s ‘overtly skewed rendition of Captain Lancey’s speech to the Irish villagers’.¹ There is no mention of how the play develops subsequently. Captain Lancey is here invoked, as the head of the imperial mission, but not the dramatically more crucial Lieutenant George Yolland. In their general introduction, however, Gilbert and Tompkins make two important points relevant to my argument. The first is to defend the inclusion of Ireland in their consideration of postcolonial drama: ‘Ireland, Britain’s oldest colony, is often considered inappropriate to the postcolonial grouping, partly because it lies just off Europe. Yet Ireland’s centuries-old political and economic oppression at the hands of the British — and its resistance to such control — fits well within the postcolonial paradigm.’² The second is to stress ‘the connections between form and content which a politicised approach to theatre always recognises’³ and necessarily involves. In this regard, what is so marked a feature of Friel’s Translations is its progressive abandonment of plot.