Jan. 26 (Bloomberg) -- Brian Friel's ``Translations,'' now revived for the second time on Broadway, is one of the great plays of the 20th century, indeed of all drama in English. And not only English but also Gaelic, and to a small extent Latin and Greek. For it is a play largely about languages, and what they can do for or against us.

We are in a disused barn in a small Irish town in 1833. Francis O'Connor has designed a cavernous, gloomily moth-eaten space littered with derelict objects. A pair of large open doors hint at an emerald world beyond, but a small, smudged window allows little cheer inside. There are a few unstable stools and a table anchored by heavy, not to say weighty, tomes. A dilapidated narrow stairway with a few intermittent bits of rotting banister leads to what must be a desolate dwelling upstairs.

This is a ``hedge school,'' an unauthorized operation, where Hugh, the local schoolmaster, holds forth when not off sopping up poteen. A grandiose, poetic old duffer, he teaches his motley group of Gaelic-speaking peasants not useful English but Homer and Horace in his beloved Greek and Latin.

Niall Buggy's Hugh is a splendid ruin of a man, his shabby clothes worn with regal hauteur, a somewhat vague toper's walk steadied by a sleepwalker's grace. The way he hands hat and cane to his dutiful elder son and teaching assistant, Manus, bespeaks the condescension of an aristocrat manque to his obedient lackey. Hugh orders Manus to bring black tea and soda bread like Henry VIII roaring for his trencher of beef.

Greek and Latin

The pupils? There is Morgan Hallett's sweet, near-dumb Sarah, whom Manus (David Costabile, a bit old for the part, but gently conveying simmering exasperation) patiently teaches to say her name, which she accomplishes, though with no small effort. We are immediately drawn into another world through Hugh's star pupil and drinking companion, Jimmy Jack, an aging, unwashed bachelor, accomplished at his Greek and Latin and nurturing funny, erotic fantasies about the goddess Athene.

So a main theme surfaces: language as escape into a fantasy past or language as necessary communication. Another pupil, the feisty milkmaid Maire, is finely embodied by the beautiful, black-tressed and pale-skinned Susan Lynch, whose delicate feet lightly skim the barn's dark earthen floor.

Maire teases such fellow students as flighty Bridget (a scrappy Geraldine Hughes, terrific at scraping her slate) and backward Doalty (properly oafish Michael Fitzgerald) doltishly flummoxed by the simplest arithmetic. She bravely challenges Hugh, demanding that he teach them some practical English, to cope with the likes of the Royal Engineers, recently arrived on a cartographic expedition to make the first map of Ireland and riling the local peasantry with their officious presence.

Glib Dandy

Owen, Hugh's younger son -- a long-absent, citified and anglicized dandy -- pops up as translator to the non-Gaelic- speaking Engineers. Alan Cox brilliantly conveys the smug, haughty ally of the conquerors, and also the basically decent human being slowly emerging though Owen's shell of glibness.

He ushers in commanding officer Captain Lancey, a shrewd businessman inadequately portrayed by beanpolish, ramrod-stiff Graeme Malcolm, and dreamy Lieutenant Yolland (Chandler Williams, less poetic and romantic than he should be), earnestly in love with all things Irish, from the sound of the Gaelic language he yearns to master to the Irish landscape and its earthy inhabitants. He longs to shed his uniform and settle down in this seemingly idyllic land.

In one of the most beautiful scenes ever written, Yolland and Maire enchantingly overcome the fact they lack a common language, a duet that, even without a balcony, matches the great love scenes of ``Romeo and Juliet'' and ``Cyrano de Bergerac.'' Friel ingeniously conveys Gaelic by having the actors speak Irish-accented English, versus the high British spoken by and to the officers.

Love Transcendant

Out of these ingredients -- and language that erects fatal barriers between person and person, peoples and peoples, barriers that only love can transcend in loving translation -- Friel weaves a profound character study, a gripping historical drama, a rollicking rustic comedy and, ultimately, a shattering tragedy. And all this interspersed with incantatory scraps of Homer and Virgil, movingly recalling a lost Eden of universal communication.

Such powerful scenes as the anglicizing of Irish place names and the closing meditation on transience are not fully enough exploited by the director, Garry Hynes, and her cast. Still, none of this is life-threatening to the play, nor should it keep you from this deeply human experience.

``Translations'' is running at the Biltmore Theater, 261 W. 47th St. in Manhattan. Information: +1-212-239-6200; http://www.mtc-nyc.org.

`Gutenberg! The Musical!'

``Gutenberg! The Musical!'' boast two passable comedians, Christopher Fitzgerald and Jeremy Shamos, posing as the co- writer-composers of the show, Scott Brown and Anthony King. Under the aliases Bud Davenport and Doug Simon, they purport to transport us into Gutenberg's Germany, impersonating medieval Teutons in lipsmackingly anachronistic jest and song.

They do this by donning and doffing some 20 assorted baseball caps inscribed Gutenberg, Young Monk, Little Girl, Drunk #1, Drunk #2, etc. More appropriate labels would be Sophomoric Joker #1 and Sophomoric Joker #2, possibly with exclamation points. The proper venue would be not a theater, however. A frat house would be more apt.

``Gutenberg! The Musical!'' is running at the Actors' Playhouse, 100 Seventh Ave. South. Information: +1-212-239-6200.

(John Simon is the New York theater critic for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer on this story: John Simon in New York at Jis1925@aol.com

Last Updated: January 26, 2007 00:01 EST