FAITH HEALER. To 22 November.
Tour
FAITH HEALER
by Brian Friel
Splinters Theatre Company Tour to 22 November 2003
Runs 2hr 20 min One interval
Review: Timothy Ramsden 27 August at Netherbow Theatre Edinburgh
A generally strong revival of Friel's amazing story, cunningly unfolded through monologues.Faith Healer is an unknowable, though deeply satisfying, play. This is partly a matter of form. Ostensibly four monologues (dangerously off-putting in lesser hands, though handled with grace and subtle audience involvement by Friel). It's actually three monologues, the opening one, of Faith Healer Francis Hardy, being interrupted by the other two - either side of the interval - by his wife and manager.
This character, Teddy, is a London showbiz agent; while Frank's Irish, having toured the other Celtic areas, Wales and Scotland, doing his healing show nightly in draughty halls with place-names that sound out like the litany of a lifetime from the opening moments, even before the lights come up.
It's only in the end that Frank's shaman/showman tour circles closer to home in Friel's regular borderland fictitious town of Ballybeg.
Two key English productions have set a high standard for the play - at the Royal Court and Almeida theatres. Splinters - whose previous production, using Orkney writer George Mackay Brown's works, For the Islands I Sing was such a dream work earlier on the 2003 Edinburgh Fringe - doesn't bring the same detail and amplitude as those casts.
But that's judging by the very highest standards, and leaves plenty of room. All three actors are good and allow Friel's unwinding drama to emerge as clearly as possible. There is a dialogue of events and perspectives, encompassing traumatic incidents, and ending with a bang surprise that puts all the preceding accounts into a new perspective.
Perhaps Finlay McClean's agent has the hardest job. In his shiny, elegant-fronted rigout he's the conniving Mr 10% to a decimal place. But Teddy's important in showing Frank's mix of success and failure. This Faith Healer isn't a fraud; it would be easier if he were. The point is, he can heal, but - apart from one amazing night when all went well - his power's variable. He may have presentiments for the night ahead, but that puts him in the position of (say) the playwright who senses tonight's opening will be a success or flop. That doesn't equate to the ability to ensure the play as it's being written will come together.
So, Francis Hardy works on through triumph and tragedy until the final moment, when a 'flop' has terrible consequences he refuses to avoid.
You have to listen hard; both John Shedden and Anna Hepburn, in contrasting ways keep the attention. With Frank it's the attempt to distinguish the smell of down-at-heel failure from the zest of commitment: the Archie Rice and the Billy Graham knit within him.
With Grace, it's the sense of clinging through the trials to her own faith in Frank, up to realisation of the trouble into which he finally, literally, walks.
Teddy has a story demonstrating the difference between intelligence and preforming instinct. His rule is to keep friendship and business apart. So he's the one who shows us Frank through a doubly different perspective: distanced and experienced.
The character needs the kind of intensity brought by Ron Cook at the Royal Court; McLean by comparison is too relaxed. The scene does lighten the mood, but the dark thread needs to stay tight, ready for the return to Frank's story. It's here a stronger directing presence could have helped.
But, frankly, Inverurie or Invergordon, even Cumbernauld and Edinburgh, are unlikely to be offered the choice (that, too is a major Faith Healer theme). Anyone who knows how fine a dramatist Friel is, or who cares for the major drama of the age, should make a bee-line for this production.
Frank: John Shedden
Grace: Anna Hepburn
Teddy: Finlay McLean
Literary Director: Donald Smith
Designer: Marjorie Fearn
Lighting: Gilbert Price
2003-08-31 13:40:30