Theater review: Brillance of ‘Faith Healer’ lies in its language
By Colin Dabkowski, NEWS ARTS WRITER
Updated: 02/24/08 7:41 AM
Forget sword fights and motorized set pieces. Toss physical comedy out the window. And while you're at it, do away with dialogue as well.
None of it is missed in the Irish Classical Theatre Company’s production of Brian Friel’s brilliant play “Faith Healer,” a transcendent piece of drama that transports the audience by the sheer force of its language and the tragic depths of its characters. The show opened Friday night.
Friel’s 1979 play, starring the formidable trio of Vincent O’Neill, Josephine Hogan and Gerry Maher, is composed of four monologues delivered by three characters, each tortured in his or her own way — by intelligence, trauma, unrequited love or some treacherous combination of those forces.
It centers around Francis Hardy (O’Neill), a gifted and self-destructive faith healer who, with his manager Teddy (Maher) and wife/paramour Gracie (Hogan), travel around England, Scotland and Wales dispensing cures to desperate and hopeless citizens. They live as exiles from their respective homelands, living out their fraught lives on an itinerant entertainment circuit that brings neither money nor happiness into their lives.
When the lights come up, we hear Hardy reciting the names of dying Welsh towns. As delivered by the warm, lilting voice of O’Neill, this opening incantation serves to place the viewer into a sort of trance. And once Friel’s gorgeous language starts pouring from O’Neill’s lips, it’s hard to remove yourself from this tortured fantasy.
True, the play presents a challenge for those whose minds are prone to wander. With none of the bells and whistles audiences have come to expect from modern drama, the play requires a sustained concentration. But it awards an incredibly high return on that investment.
As Teddy, the optimistic impresario and manager, Maher is a joy to watch, not only for his engrossing comedic gifts but a unique ability to mix wistfulness and derision to create a convincing new emotion. Hogan turns in a heartbreaking performance as Gracie (a role she played in ICTC’s original production of the play), tinged as much with self-deprecating sarcasm as outright despair.
Director Derek Campbell makes use of the Andrews Theatre space well, with aesthetic help from lighting and set designer Brian Cavanagh. Cavanagh has managed to assist in creating a markedly different feel for each of the four monologues by, among other things, cleverly painting the floor in three separate styles that blend seamlessly into one another. Costumes by Tessa Lew and sound design from Tom Makar each offer easy access points into the drama.
“Faith Healer,” ultimately, presents unadorned the beleaguered heart of Ireland itself, that thrilling, tragic condition that Irish critic Seamus Deane called “the closeness between eloquence and violence.”
“Since the beginning of this century,” Deane wrote in the introduction to a 1984 collection of Friel’s plays, “Irish drama has been heavily populated by people for whom vagrancy and exile have become inescapable conditions about which they can do nothing but talk, endlessly and eloquently and usually to themselves.”
And though Friel’s play is so much more than simply that, this Irish Classical production is endlessly and eloquently delightful.
Theater Review
“ Faith Healer”
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The Irish Classical Theatre Company’s production of Brian Friel’s brilliant play.
cdabkowski@buffnews.com
