Friel's Translations Replaces The Country Girl on MTC Broadway Roster

Manhattan Theatre Club has postponed plans to produce a revival of Clifford Odets' The Country Girl at the Biltmore Theatre and will instead present Brian Friel's Translations as part of its 2006-07 Broadway season.

A co-production with the McCarter Theatre Center, Translations will start performances January 4 and open on January 25, 2007. Tony Award winner Garry Hynes will helm the new staging, which will first play at the McCarter from October 8 to 29.

MTC presented the American premiere of Translations in April 1981 at their then-off-Broadway home, Stage 73. Clashing cultures and tragedies of miscommunication unfold in Friel's invented Irish county of Ballybeg also the setting of such plays as Dancing at Lughnasa, Aristocrats and Molly Sweeney. Translations depicts the power of language to unite and divide people in a time of cultural imperialism.

MTC hopes to produce The Country Girl in the 2007-08 season.