ajhlovestheatre

FAITH HEALER

by Brian Friel

Directed by Rachel O’Riordan

Lyric Hammersmith Theatre, London – until 13 April 2024

https://lyric.co.uk/whats-on/shows/

There’s something magical about Faith Healer, Brian Friel’s quartet of interconnected monologues of dislocation, faith and heartbreak. This is the fourth London revival in about thirty years, and it seems that every time this story of a travelling showman who may or may not have the power to heal, and the two lost souls he enriches and destroys, arrives with new colours, fresh insights and the transformative power of truly great storytelling. Rachel O’Riordan’s newest iteration for the Lyric Hammersmith is a searing piece of theatrical alchemy that showcases a trio of magnificent actors at the top of their games, and mines Friel’s poetic yet brutal text for every ounce of its truth, grief, rueful humour and eerie fascination.

The play is as elliptical as it’s compulsive, leaving audience members full of questions about the veracity of the different versions of the same story we’ve just witnessed but winded by the potency of Friel’s creation, and, certainly in this flawless new production, dazzled by the sheer craft on display. The four scenes actually feel more like confessionals than monologues, the names of the remote villages where faith healer Frank Hardy toured to ply his trade running through the text like a mantra or incantation, as Hardy or his neglected wife Grace feverishly, doggedly recite them in a bid to keep panic and darkness at bay. Friel’s language is at once conversational and evocative, with little explosions of shock detonated at points by a memory or anecdote.

O’Riordan and her peerless trio of actors (Declan Conlon, Justine Mitchell, Nick Holder) calibrate all this perfectly. Every gesture, every vocal intonation and facial tic tells a story of a pain inflicted or remembered, of a memory or inconvenient truth quashed. That intense, exquisite detail is matched by Paul Keogan’s lighting and Anna Clock’s soundscape, which repeatedly offer minute but telling adjustments and effects prompted by the text. It’s incredibly subtle but infinitely rich, like the haunted echos of past trauma manifested in sound and light.

Colin Richmond’s spare but impactful set design reveals more and more of itself as the characters do, starting as an abstract jumble of chairs and a tattered banner but ending up as an exposed, distressed wall, just as Frank stands before us with so many of his illusions and fantasies about himself exploded and debunked. Conlon captures his hard drinking charisma, while also suggesting a dead-eyed self protection, callousness even, that chills, and demonstrates simultaneously how this slippery figure captures hearts and imaginations, and will always survive at all costs. He’s seductive, magnetic…and potentially lethal.

Wife Grace and manager Teddy are the principal victims of this bewitching toxicity, and Mitchell and Holder give multi-layered, riveting accounts of these fascinating characters, whose respective stories cast both light and shade on Frank. There are few finer actresses working in British or Irish theatre right now than Mitchell: in last year’s National Theatre Dancing at Lughnasa revival she found notes and colours in Kate, the most uptight, closed-off of Friel’s Mundy sisters, that I’d never seen before. She is revelatory once again here; this Grace is so dreadfully damaged yet possessed of a wry self awareness, bitter humour, and sudden shards of incandescent fury that pin you to your seat. When she breaks open, it’s devastating. This is a beautiful, unforgettable performance.

Holder’s Teddy is another creation that stuns by stealth. Initially he comes across like an old school Music Hall vaudevillian, calling everyone “dear heart” and nailing hilarious stories of the outlandishly tawdry acts he’s managed… but Holder gives him an unsettling edge of aggression alongside the bonhomie and camp raconteuring. He’s tremendous company but you feel that it could all turn sour at any moment. Holder is an extraordinary stage creature, flamboyant but sensitive and he builds his monologue to an electrifying climax.

The way O’Riordan juxtaposes stillness and motion is exemplary, the focus and tension never wavering. There is a compassion and humanity to the way these broken people are depicted that enriches the soul even as it hurts the heart. A modern classic is illuminated and reinvigorated. Theatre doesn’t get much better than this. Spellbinding.