FAITH HEALER. To 17 November.
Manchester.
FAITH HEALER
by Brian Friel.
Library Theatre To 17 October 2007.
Mon-Thu 7.30pm Fri-Sat 8pm Mat 8, 10, 15, 17 Nov 3pm.
Runs 2hr 45min One interval.
TICKETS: 0161 236 7110.
www.librarytheatre.com
Review: Timothy Ramsden 30 October.
Manchester does well again by Ballybeg.
Library Theatre Associate Director Roger Haines picks his Brian Friels with care. Having successfully directed the most famous, Translations and Dancing at Lughnasa, he’s turned his attention to this play, which like Molly Sweeney, proceeds by monologues. Both are also amongst Friel’s finest.
Whereas Molly intercuts three characters’ narration as the story proceeds, this play sandwiches two long soliloquies between the opening and closing parts of a speech by the title character, Frank Hardy. Irish-born, he returns home after years taking his faith-healing show round the villages of Wales and Scotland, their names having become like a mantra for him.
Like Friel’s earlier Living Quarters, currently at Edinburgh’s Royal Lyceum, Faith Healer considers the Rashomon-like uncertainty of memory, whether the variations between the three characters – Frank, his wife Gracie and agent Teddy – results from wish-fulfilment, personality or sheer error. The play’s strength lies in its fine, unportentous, language and its careful match of structure to the theme of memory and self-invention.
Haines comments that the play reflects the writer’s art in its subject. There’s the attempt to weave a spell, the inter-relation of fact and fiction, and the success rate; Frank reckons he cures one person in ten, but that’s enough to bring the hopeful buying what he has to offer.
His production catches the variety of mood, Ged McKenna’s Frank first speaking opposite rows of chairs laid out as for one of his meetings. They soon disappear, as eventually does the huge wall-poster advertising the healing sessions. As outward reality departs, inner experiences come to the fore.
There’s a melancholy determination to Frank, while Stella Madden’s Grace is sombre. Drinking her glass of whiskey, walking away towards the poster, there’s a sense of lost years, focused on her experience with her baby. After the interval, there’s the surprise of Kim Durham’s Teddy, a sharp-nosed London variety agent who remains puzzled by the mystery of performance, a talent that never equates with intelligence.
All three actors convey the idea of uncertainty and the impact of experience in varying ways, giving force to Frank’s culminating line in another fine Library revival.
Frank: Ged McKenna.
Grace: Stella Madden.
Teddy: Kim Durham.
Director: Roger Haines.
Designer: Judith Croft.
Lighting: Nick Richings.
Sound: Paul Gregory.
Voice coach: Sally Hague.
2007-11-04 14:38:01