Faith Healer

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"Am I a conman?" - Rated
Brian Friel, one of Ireland's leading contemporary dramatists, creates an unusual and absorbing drama about "The Fantastic Francis Hardy," a faith healer originally from Ireland, who has been traveling the small towns of England, Wales, and Scotland with his wife Grace and his manager Teddy. On some nights several people in a small audience may be healed, but, nine times out of ten, no one is. "Am I endowed with a unique and awesome gift?" Frank wonders. "Am I a conman?" He believes he falls somewhere "between those absurd exaggerations."

The play has no interactive scenes. In separate monologues each character stands alone on an almost-bare stage, and all attention is riveted on him/her. In glorious language, each person reveals the problems which torment him/her. Talking about his days on the road with Grace and Teddy, Frank discusses his recent return to Ireland, where, in a local pub, he made two attempts at healing, but he refuses to say much more.

The suspense builds in the next act, as the distraught speaker is Grace, a former lawyer who gave up everything to follow the charismatic Frank. As she tells of her love for Frank, his treatment of her, and the terrible conditions of life on the road, the audience is unsure why they have been living apart. The third speaker, the devoted Teddy, fills in some gaps between the monologues of Frank and of Grace, though we still do not know what has happened--until Frank's final monologue.

In the hands of outstanding actors, these monologues are powerful theater. (James Mason was Frank in the 1979 New York run of the play.) In a repeating incantation, Frank and Grace "sing" the names of the small towns in Scotland and Wales to which they have journeyed, connecting their monologues through this repetition and different memories of the same events. Surprisingly, the lyrics of Jerome Kern's "The Way You Look Tonight," which Teddy uses as background music during Frank's healings, echo through Teddy's monologue, which achieves great irony when he sings, "I will feel a glow just thinking of you..."

As the audience develops interest in and empathy for the speakers, the tension rises. Gradually one becomes aware that time has passed between these monologues, and Frank's concluding monologue is stunning. Friel manages, somehow, to create an involving and powerful drama, despite the fact there is no on-stage interaction and the characters flout the "rules" of theater by "telling about" events instead of reenacting them. Memorable and haunting, both as an overall play and as close-ups of three individual characters, this is Friel in one of his most compelling and unusual plays. Mary Whipple

Friel at his finest - Rated
Brian Friel has done it again!

Initially this appears to be a somewhat dull play, consisting of four monologues by three characters. It follows the waning fortunes of a Faith Healer as he travels around the UK and Ireland, and how his life affects his travelling companions.

Below the surface is an incredibly deep and moving play which shows how everybody is fallible (even those touched by God) and the despair that is felt when everything falls apart. Despite being no interaction on stage between the characters, the characters come across amazingly clearly in what is said. The fact that they are delivered in monologue, directly to the audience, only goes to give the play more power and help those watching to care more about what is going on.

Prepare to feel completely drained emotionally afterwards.