THEATRE REVIEW: FAITH HEALER
5 May'10

Brilliance shines through ‘Faith Healer’

JOHN COULBOURN - QMI Agency
3.5 out of 5

If painter Georges Seurat had painted with words instead of oils, chances are he might have painted something like FAITH HEALER — a work in which countless individual points of view, painted in highly personal colours, come together to create a breathtaking portrait of a moment in time.

Which is not to say playwright Brian Friel’s brilliantly sketched triptych is a walk in the park — on the Island of la Grande Jatte, or anywhere else, for that matter. Instead, it’s a trek through three dark souls, as they recall the events leading up to a particular evening that ends in a tragedy that seems all too inevitable.

First of all, there is Frank (played here by Stuart Hughes), an itinerant faith healer by trade and a drunk by inclination. He has spent most of his adult life traveling with his entourage through the backwater of the British Isles, trading on a rare gift that, in its intermittent nature, has become as much a curse as a blessing.

Then there is Grace, Frank’s long-time companion and possibly his wife, played by Brenda Robins. A child of privilege, she has tossed it all over for a man her family considers a mountebank and even though she’s grown road weary, she seems incapable of extricating herself from their itinerant existence and its attendant horrors.

And finally, there is Teddy (played by Diego Matamoros), an opportunistic little cockney who, years ago, saw Franks’ gift as a portal to greatness and riches and so hitched his wagon — or in this case, his van — to Frank’s star and has come along for the ride.

In a series of four monologues — Frank, Grace, Teddy, then Frank again — they revisit one particular night “in a pub, a lounge bar, really, outside a village called Ballybeg, not far from Donegal Town,” and the long dark road that led them there. But while all three agree on the location, that’s about the only area in which they achieve factual accord.

Frank tells us Grace is his mistress, while Grace and Teddy insist she is his wife.

Frank insists Teddy chose the song that begins each of their services, while Teddy claims it was Grace’s choice.

Grace remembers the weather in a visit to Scotland as being perfectly horrible, while Teddy recalls it being as simply perfect.

Frank claims he left his two partners for a time to visit his ailing mother, while Teddy and Grace insist his absence was occasioned by the death of his father.

Thanks to Friel’s skill as a writer, however, such inconsistencies serve not to muddy the waters of their relationship, but to clarify it — and the deeper the actors dive into the characters, the clearer the picture becomes. Unfortunately, under the direction of Gina Wilkinson, all three performers are content to skate on the surface of their characters, as unmarked by the grit and grime of their sad and sordid lives as Teddy and Grace are by the oceans of booze they consume with so much alacrity and so little effect during their respective monologues.

Under Wilkinson’s direction, Hughes almost dances his part, but never leads us to Frank’s pain and insecurity; Robins touches us, but never shows us the full depth of Grace’s tragedy; and Matamoros, though he turns in an entertaining performance, fails to show us full measure of the evil of Teddy’s self-serving opportunism.

Still, enough of Friel’s genius shines through to provide ample proof of the play’s enduring worth. For the rest, well sadly, you’ll just have to take it on faith.

FAITH HEALER
Soulpepper at the Young Centre
Directed by Gina Wilkinson