REVIEW: The Babelfish Tartuffe (Ss Michael and John, Dublin)

As a fine example of high concept theatre, the Babelfish Tartuffe practically sells itself. A troop of young French and Spanish actors perform one of Moliere's classic 17th century farces, the script of which has been produced by pasting the French language text of the play into a web-based machine translation tool, the Babelfish of the title.

By this method, director, Jaimie Carswell and his Mangiare Theatre Company aim at creating a contemporary vision of the Tower of Babel, a hectic, confused place where language is constantly falling down around our ears, and constantly being reconstructed – by cowboy builders.

Tartuffe, like the language in the play, is a hypocritical fraud, a false friend. Somehow or other he has worked his way into the affections of the head of a wealthy family. But while he promises a connection with higher values, this impostor is busy feathering his nest. Now he even has his eye on the boss' beautiful daughter.

The problem is, it could be hard to learn all this if you didn't arrive at the theatre with that knowledge. For, true to its word, large parts of the dialogue are completely unintelligible. The actors add in the little peaks and troughs, the emotions that might fit, but what they say is often nothing more than a kind of babel. The performances, however, are not strong enough to carry a show built – by its own reckoning – on gobbledygook.

Yes, this is a pretty radical way to examine a crisis in meaning, but it's not that much fun to watch. As an experience it is rather like watching a classic piece of theatre, from another culture, in a language you barely know. The knowledge that there are no native speakers of this new tongue does not come as much consolation.