Faith Healer
Subscribe
X

Get the latest from Beat

Faith Healer

faithhealerimage.jpg

After an award-winning run in Sydney, the Judy Davis directed production of Brian Friel’s 1979 play Faith Healer has made its way to Melbourne. The play tells the story of Francis Hardy, an Irish faith healer reflecting on his career as a travelling huckster. Told in four monologues, the play introduces Hardy’s perspective before complicating his version of events with the testimony of his long-suffering wife Grace and his kind-hearted manager Teddy. The play can be read as a reflection on the life of an artist, but it also deals with questions of identity, memory, and the spiritual unknown. It is both a challenging play and a brilliant one, brought to vivid life by Davis and her company. Ultimately, Faith Healer arrives as one of the best productions to appear in Melbourne so far this year.  

  

In the first of the four monologues that comprise the play, Francis Hardy describes their faith healing theatrics as operating somewhere between the momentous and the absurd. This provides an accurate description of the play itself. Friel’s writing vacillates between the tragic and the comic at unpredictable junctures, placing the tone of the play in an almost permanent state of in-between. It’s a balancing act made possible by the empathy Friel has for his characters. All three of the leads are flawed to varying degrees, but the writing is such that you are not left feeling any of them are less than human.   

This is also a testament to the acting, which is terrific across the board. Colin Friels, returning to Melbourne after his turn in MTC’s Skylight last year, gives a wonderful performance as the titular faith healer. The breadth and scale of his performance keeps his sections of the play perpetually engaging, and his charisma as an actor conveys the strange allure his character is said to possess. Alison Whyte brings a compelling vulnerability to the role of Grace. Her performance feels a little rote, leaning heavily on sudden outbursts and a semi-permanent tremor, but she is never any less than riveting. Paul Blackwell as Teddy gives what is perhaps the most subtle and effective performance of the lot. He is by turns hilarious and poignant, bringing comic relief to the play without letting it slip in to farce.  

The play is staged simply but powerfully by Brian Thomson, all of it taking place on a single raised platform surrounded by a screen of undulating grey clouds. Combined with a sparse use of props, the staging evokes the isolation of the characters while reminding us of the ties that bind them. The lighting by Verity Hampson and the sound design of Paul Charlier move quietly in and out of focus, all making us feel that the play is taking place not in the scanty lodgings of the three characters but in the lush twilight of their shared memories.

It all amounts to an enthralling, funny and ultimately haunting piece of theatre that deserves to be seen by anyone with the patience and inclination to let its complexities unfold before them.  

By Tiernan Morrison