Brian Friel's "Translations" is a play about the way language can confuse and divide, set in 1830s Ireland as English soldiers begin to dominate the local population.

In the current production at the University of Hawai'i-Manoa, director Lurana Donnels O'Malley adds a Hawaiian chanter and a pair of American Sign Language interpreters, salting the original Irish stew with parallel culture clashes and communication barriers.

She also brings the fiddler down from the roof and into the schoolhouse.

But the Friel play would stand on its own despite these additions and be sharper without them. The key to honing the best edge is to find the music in the language.

Characters eventually emerge in the lab theater production, but without the lyrical, mesmerizing cadence that their speeches might provide. Instead of the melody, we get way too much local color and are forced to puzzle out relationships for too long until the plot gets rolling.

Friel is better known for his "Philadelphia Here I Come!" and "Dancing at Lughnasa," written almost 30 years apart. "Translations" has had limited success as a message play that — if done right — can be taken over by Irish lilt and heartbreaking disappointment.

In the UH production, performances warm up slowly but begin to bear fruit in the second act.

The central love triangle includes a British soldier (Nathan Garrett) and an Irish milkmaid (Rikki Jo Hickey), who share a poignant moonlit love scene in which neither speaks the other's language. The third party is a quiet schoolmaster (B.J. Larson) driven to uncharacteristic rage by the duplicity of the girl's betrayal.

There is equally good byplay between a couple of boozy incompetents (Craig Howes and Thomas Barron) who challenge each other with quotes in Greek and Latin, but who are oblivious to the English danger and powerless to divert it.

There is also an effective scene in which the soldiers' Irish translator (Daniel D. Randerson), who has been helping the English map the countryside and identify English-language equivalents for Irish village names, becomes emboldened enough to point out that they have been calling him by the wrong name.

The play ends without clarity as violence looms over the disappearance of the English soldier and Irish villagers face retaliation. Sad notes are struck over the likely loss of something beautiful and misunderstood.

Set designers Andrew Varela and Melissa A. Elmore follow director O'Malley's lead in excessive invention.

The audience sits on either side of a long, narrow playing area that isn't well used and that forces bad sight lines. Stagehands wrestling to replace unnecessary set pieces take the glow off that lovely moonlight love scene. And the best touches are almost subliminal — a skeleton of overhead beams that effectively suggest a barn and a floor of cobblestones composed of pages torn from books.

The point isn't totally lost in this "Translations." It just gets a bit crowded out on the dance floor.

Joseph T. Rozmiarek has been reviewing theater since 1973.