Review: FAITH HEALER, Lyric Hammersmith

Frank Hardy has a problem. He’s an Irish faith healer without faith in his power to heal. It comes, it goes and he only knows for sure when it is not going to happen. With his wife Grace and manager Teddy, their tour of Wales and Scotland in a battered van has seen his abilities steadily failing him. A last throw of the die sees him return to his homeland. What could go wrong?

Brian Friel’s play has been around the block more times than a seriously lost tourist and arrives at the Lyric Hammersmith with artistic director Rachel O’Riordan at the helm. The three-hander was critically acclaimed when it first came out and more recently: a National Theatre poll listed it in top 100 of the last century while the Independent went as far as calling it one of the best 40 plays of all time. It has attracted star names over the decades like Ralph Fiennes, Cherry Jones, James Mason and both Niamh and Sinéad Cusack. A lockdown version at the Old Vic was performed by Michael Sheen, David Threlfall and Indira Varma.

This is not a comfortable watch by any stretch of the imagination. O’Riordan superbly directs what is effectively a series of campfire ghost tales with each character raking over the ashes of the past while never, ever looking into the flames. The Rashomon comparisons are inevitable: we see the central storyline through very different perspectives and, by the end, it is clear that there is little all three can agree upon.

Certain key events are present throughout: Hardy curing his entire audience of ten in a church in Wales; the curing of a crooked finger in Friel’s favourite fictional town of Ballybeg; and that they all visited Kinlochbervie in Scotland. From these milestones, the accounts diverge in ways both subtle and wild. 

Friel is not known for his happy-clappy fast-paced dramas. His descriptions of poverty, death, heartbreak and despair cut to the bone. There’s a deep, dark intensity which draws us into this Fifties-set plot and his unhappy trio this portrayed time around by Declan Conlon, Justine Mitchell and Nick Holder. For Faith Healer, he deploys a structure of four monologues with Grace and Teddy’s bookended by two from Frank.

The play’s languid approach to character development may not be to everyone’s tastes, especially in this era of snappy dialogue and fast-paced dramas, but Friel’s novelistic writing style allows us to get under the skin of each of these benighted individuals. Frank is focussed on understanding on the how and why of his “gift”, Grace obsesses over loss and heartbreak while Teddy camps it up superbly and lifts the mood with every utterance of “dear heart”. They all distance themselves from the most painful memories through a combination of mantras and booze to different degrees of success.

Conlon and Mitchell do very well superbly realise the sheer horror of the pivotal plot points but it is Holder who ties the various strands together best as the Cockney manager left to pick up the pieces from various Hardy maelstroms.

Faith Healer continues at Lyric Hammersmith until 13 April.

Photo credit: Marc Brenner

 

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