Faith Healer

Chris O'Rourke

2 minutes ago

3 min read

Conleth Hill in Faith Healer. Image, Carrie Davenport

*****

When it first premiered in 1979, Brian Friel’s enduring Faith Healer wasn’t regarded as one of the greatest plays of the 20th century. It wasn’t regarded as one of the greatest plays of that week. Acclaim came slow and late, as did classic status. Almost half a century on, as we conclude the first quarter of the 21st century, the question of Faith Healer’s status bears revisiting. Friel’s storytelling memory play built on four interlinked monologues presenting differently today. Its tale of an Irish itinerant faith healer, Frank, his bad girl/good wife, Grace, and his Cockney manager, Teddy, travelling through Wales and Scotland now devoid of nostalgia. Its dated references belonging to the dusty corridors of forgotten history. Faith Healer’s call sheet of events — curing ten people in a single session, a four night bender in an expensive hotel, a stillborn child buried in a Scottish field and a fateful challenge in Ballybeg, Donegal — marinated in old-world alcoholism through which stories are prismed. A tale whose time and people are more forgotten ghosts than memories of a recent past. Like its Fred Astaire soundtrack, most of its references are unfamiliar to a modern audience.

Lisa Dwyer Hogg in Faith Healer. Image, Carrie Davenport

Visually, director Emma Jordan recognises the challenge and leans into it. Stuart Marshall’s clever set steeped in Paul Keogan’s liminal lights as much a moonlit graveyard clearing as a deserted community hall. Abandoned chairs, like discarded tombstones pressed to either side, a catacomb of forgotten lives. A tall blackboard with Fantastic Francis Hardy written in chalk evoking a neglected headstone, the etched name belonging to someone no one remembers anymore. Frank, Grace and Teddy each a ghost recounting a different version of the same events. Characters equal parts their story, its teller and their selectively faulty memory.

Chris McCurry in Faith Healer. Image, Carrie Davenport

Like Conleth Hill’s charismatic Frank. How he came to believe himself a faith healer we’re never quite sure. We only know his wife Grace and manager Teddy believe in him. Full of modest ambition, brains and talent; Hill’s captivating charisma introduces Frank as a man you’d buy ice from in a snowstorm. A mean-spirited charmer who believes his own self-created press, both its good and bad news. His devotedly resentful wife Grace exhibiting Stockholm syndrome. A lush, legal-minded librarian who believes herself proof positive that behind every great man is a tortured and bewildered woman. Lisa Dwyer Hogg superbly cranking up the intensity as a whisky-swilling wife nursing pained memories on the verge of a nervous breakdown. A stunning contrast to Chris McCurry’s lovable Teddy, whose Cockney rhythms highlight the vernacular in Friel’s prose. A man whose memory is as unreliable as the others despite being an objective observer. Their stories revealing that the only story we ever truly tell is our own. That what we only truly remember is ourselves. Each story having its axe to grind as the mind’s spotlight focuses on life’s interchangeable trivia. Friel's floodlight revealing our endless, self-centred, self-serving process of storytelling. Lies, fictions, all escapes and distractions with which we manufacture meaning whose value lies solely with the teller, whatever our shared experience. Belief that we can arrive at an agreed truth little more than a whisper on the wind. Truth to be found in our final, independent surrender to homecoming.

Chris McCurry in Faith Healer. Image, Carrie Davenport

Throughout, the postmodern question of the insubstantiality of stories is hidden in plain sight. Faith Healer as much a character study as a study of character and how we create it. Wherein lies its enduring relevance, along with Friel’s near-perfect prose. Faith Healer is not simply concerned with the stories we tell ourselves, the details of which are no great measure. It asks how and why we need to tell stories in the first place. Our subtextual and blatant casting of ourselves as star and sympathetic audience to our own fictions which we can never realise because they were never real. In the post-postmodern whatever today is, or in whatever period comes next, it’s safe to say Faith Healer remains one of the greatest plays of this or any century. Lyric Theatre’s production, part of its 75th anniversary celebrations, one of the best productions of Faith Healer you’re ever likely to see. At almost three hours, get it wrong and Faith Healer generates the same level of tedium as being trapped on a long-distance train journey with Kevin McAleer’s Colm McCool from Derry Girls. Thankfully, Jordan and company get it magnificently right. A wet and windy Saturday matinee packed to the rafters saw an audience enthralled by three sterling performances directed with exquisite timing. Faith Healer looking flawless, effortless and timeless almosy fifty years later.