Playwright: Brian Friel. At: Caffeine Theatre at Lincoln Square Arts Center in the Berry United Methodist Church, 4754 N. Leavitt. Phone: 312-409-4778; $15. Runs through: Nov. 18
One of the tasks of any reigning faction is to erase, insofar as it can, all memory of its predecessors. A time-tested method of accomplishing this is to impose a ban on popular customs, most especially the indigenous languages. With minimal exposure to familiar discourse and the culture reflected in its structure, the thinking went, the conquered tribes would have no choice but to adopt the ways of their rulers, rather than proclaim loyalty to a heritage no longer officially existing. This rationale is evident in our world today—consider the many incarnations of St. Petersburg/Leningrad/Stalingrad in Russia, Peiping/Peking/Beijing in China, or virtually any city in the Balkans.
Brian Friel illustrates this principle in his play, set in the western province of Ireland’s County Donegal in the summer of 1833. The local ‘hedge school’—only recently legalized by the British government pending establishment of their own educational institutions—is a babel in itself: classes are conducted in Gaelic, but the itinerant Jimmy Jack swaps Latin and Greek with the schoolmaster, while a vocally impaired student communicates by signing. The star pupil, however, is Maire Chatach, whom the professor’s son hopes to marry. When a military delegation arrives to draw up a new map for the region—with English names—it seems a harmless, even progressive, mission. Indeed, junior officer George Yolland becomes enamored of this foreign land, despite his ignorance of its language.
The facts mandate an unhappy future to all parties involved: Anglo-Irish hostilities soon flare up, forcing men under suspicion into exile. Draconian measures are exacted and whole villages razed, with crop-destroying blight ultimately ensuring the Irish diaspora. But under the direction of Jennifer Shook, this Caffeine Theatre production conjures all the idyllic optimism of a moment in history fraught with possibility. Christine Adaire’s intensive dialect instruction and the actors’ meticulous textual interpretation easily convey the characters’ bewilderment at unfamiliar tongues, even to the pronunciation of the exotic place-names that gradually increase in importance—not only to the citizens on the verge of extinction, but to anyone who has ever considered the role played by the manipulation of words in shaping the destinies of nations.