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This evening we went to see the Irish Theatre Group’s production of Brian Friel’s Translations, directed by Nick Roche. It’s a brilliant piece of theatre, leaving the audience, as the publicity succinctly declared, ‘to ponder on how we communicate with one another, between countries, between siblings, between the generations, between the sexes, between cultures and between languages’. It is also, I might add, a powerful piece of writing against colonisation and cultural imperialism (every Englishman should see it). We had an additional reason for going. The part of Hugh was played by a member of my writers’ workshop, John Boyle, who played the same part in the ITG’s first production of the play in 1983, when the playwright himself was among the audience. The whole cast were excellent and once again I was left thinking how lucky we are to live in a city with such a rich cultural agenda.