Next up at Bristol Old Vic? A slice of classic Brian Friel. Steve Wright lays on his hands.

On one level, the play asks whether Frank really is the real thing. He’s a bit like an obscure, cult pop star who occasionally writes an absolute masterpiece, but also has years of total futility – and yet this sort of Messianic mist swirls around them. Frank’s skills are erratic: but the thing about faith healing is that even if you do it just once, it’s such an extraordinary story that people will follow you around for years afterwards.”

The Frank in question is the eponymous faith healer from Brian Friel’s 1979 play: the speaker is Simon Godwin, Bristol Old Vic’s associate director, who’s directing this rarely seen slice of Friel in BOV Studio. Written midway through Friel’s career and a year before the masterpiece that was ‘Translations’, ‘Faith Healer’ is set sometime in the two decades after World War II , an age when itinerant performers, vaudeville and freakshow acts still toured the British Isles’ further reaches. Frank purports to use faith and the laying on of hands to cure people of their ailments. We witness him travelling the country in the company of Teddy, his ebullient Cockney manager, and Grace, his long-suffering wife.

“Teddy is a very funny character: a great raconteur, who talks about touring with a whippet who can play bagpipes, a woman who talks pidgin and a man who imitated bird calls,” Simon explains. “His is a very eccentric, alien world.” There’s almost an odd-couple chemistry between Teddy and Frank. “Teddy is sort of in love with Frank, always believing that the two of them are on the verge of a huge hit – but he sacrifices his life to driving the van with Frank in the back, often drunk, from one village hall to the next, in the crazy hope that someday they will make it big. They’re like Chekhovian characters – they dream of great achievements, and there’s a lot of poignancy about whether they’ll make it or not. And humour, too because we all recognise those aspirations.”

Grace, Frank’s wife, also suffers from life in his shadow. “You have to be in the real world in order to love, and Frank is always in his own world, which makes him both very attractive and yet somehow absent. But Grace is drawn to his darkness, charisma and sense of danger – she comes from a middle-class family, and he represents the polar opposite.”

Quite apart from the veracity (or not) of what he does, Frank is a flawed character. “He has quite a bad drink problem – partly to help him when the healing goes wrong and partly to help him when it goes right. In a way, the faith healer is also a metaphor for the artist – someone who lives in another world. And that world is so appealing and attractive that you can end up being quite cruel to people in your everyday world.”

Crucially, the characters are never on stage at the same time: the action proceeds via monologues from each character. “It’s an atmospheric, eerie piece of theatre. There’s a very close relationship with the audience – the action proceeds via these four monologues, but in fact the audience becomes the other character in the play. The characters address us directly, they confide, challenge, confess, deceive and surprise us.” It will, Simon avers, demand some committed, energised performances from a cast including, as Frank himself, acclaimed TV and theatre actor Finbar Lynch. “Finbar has immense vitality and energy, and the confidence to really play with audiences.”

The four monologues serve to give us different versions of what might be happening. “Life is one long series of Chinese whispers – we’re constantly retelling and re-inventing our experiences for others. The play asks, ‘is there such a thing as truth?’ These characters contradict each other at times quite dramatically and audiences have to think, ‘OK, what is actually real here?’”

All this confusion does, however, build to a powerful climax. “Alongside faith and truth, homecoming is a third major theme. Frank eventually decides to go home to Ireland where there is something waiting for him – something, it’s suggested, far from welcoming. We slowly learn more about the nature of this very shocking homecoming.”

Friel’s tone towards his protagonists shifts throughout, from celebratory to sceptical, scornful to euphoric. “And the audience travels along that line too. For many of us, our relationship with faith is an occasional one. I think Brian is trying to describe the sensation of faith, this strange thing that lies beyond tangible experience. As we watch Frank’s attempts to achieve the miraculous, we are reminded of our own yearnings for something beyond the everyday.

“He’s showing us that the wish to believe is very strong, and always will be. But what do we do with that feeling? What is merely false hope and sentimentalism, and what is a genuine wish for the sublime? And if we feel that genuine wish for the sublime, where do we seek it? And could the results be delusional and harmful, or can they be of good in the world?”

FAITH HEALER IS AT BRISTOL OLD VIC STUDIO UNTIL SAT 5 MAR. FOR REVIEW CLICK HERE.
 

Copyright Steve Wright 2011 

Tweet