The year is 1833, and in the townland of Baile Beag (Ballybeg), County Donegal, a small group of young people attend a hedge school to learn reading, writing and arithmetic – and a liberal dose of Latin and Greek – from schoolmaster Hugh O’Donnell. The modest surroundings of the school (‘in a disused barn or hay shed or byre’) provide the setting for Brian Friel’s masterpiece, an extraordinary exploration of language, power, history and identity.

Friel found a rich dramatic seam in a moment of historical transformation. Thirty years after the Act of Union and still a decade before the Great Famine, cartographers and orthographers were dispatched with the Royal Fusiliers to travel the breadth of Ireland, charged with making detailed maps and anglicising placenames. The initial meetings between the touring officers and the people of Baile Beag are cordial, and the younger Englishman, Lieutenant Yolland, is captivated by the place to which he has been posted. Some of the locals are suspicious: Hugh’s son Manus, for example, shows little but scorn for Yolland and his senior, the cartographer Captain Lancey. But his brother Owen sees an opportunity to guide the renaming exercise in a more meaningful direction. Meanwhile, Maire and Yolland unexpectedly find themselves drawn to one another, and in the play’s centrepiece scene, Friel constructs a faltering, beautiful conversation across the language barrier.

As the placenames on the map take on strange new forms and sounds, the very ground seems to be shifting under the feet of the people of Baile Beag. The characters hear rumours that the new system of National Schools will teach all subjects through English, marking another profound upheaval. Centuries of culture, and an old way of life, are being transformed.

The task of anglicising and standardising Irish placenames may seem to be all in the name of progress, but the sappers' work effaces the subtle, sometimes centuries-old meanings and associations of the Irish words and their connection with the landscape. For Hugh, to understand words deeply – their meaning and etymology – is of primary importance, and he repeatedly quizzes his students on Latin and Greek conjugations and definitions. Yet even he acknowledges that words are 'not immortal'. The people are neither ignorant nor dogmatic. Deciding on the naming of Tobair Bhri, Yolland seeks to maintain the memory of a local story, while Owen wonders whether it's worth 'keeping piety with a man long dead'. Maire is forthright and practical on the subject: ‘I want to be able to speak English because I’m going to America as soon as the harvest’s all saved’. She knows English would provide the best means of reaching better circumstances if she must leave her homeland of limited opportunity.