Faith Healer – Lyric Hammersmith, London

Writer: Brian Friel

Director: Rachel O’Riordan

Rachel O’Riordan understands the power of the monologue like no other director. Her production of Gary Owen’s Iphegenia in Splott at the Lyric Hammersmith was completely enthralling and now comes her inspired revival of Brian Friel’s 1979 play Faith Healer.

You might think a play which consisted simply of four monologues might lack drama, but Friel’s extraordinary lyrical storytelling keeps us gripped from start to finish. We first meet the dapper Frank, or The Fantastic Francis Hardy, Faith Healer, as his banner reads. He tours the UK with his promoter, Teddy, and Grace, the woman Frank refers to disparagingly as his mistress, making appearances for one night only at endless small church and village halls in Wales and Scotland. A few people will usually troop in in the hope of some sort of cure.

The fascination of the play is, of course, does Frank really have some sort of mystical ability? Can he really cure people? Or is it people’s powerful longing, their faith in a healer’s power, that somehow allows them to leave contented? It’s a question Friel keeps in constant motion. Sometimes it’s obvious Frank is a con man, drunk on his own ability to deceive people. Yet there is intriguing evidence that on rare occasions, something inexplicable really happens. Each of the monologues, Frank’s, Grace’s and finally Teddy’s, circles back through the rare moments when they witness the miraculous.

Frank is perhaps the hardest, least empathic character to play. Declan Conlon fascinates as the closed-off Faith Healer whom we meet after years on the road. He is masterful and evidently controlling, sneering at the trusting people who seek his help. Yet there is a vulnerability suggested by his incantatory repetition of place names – it’s a trope Friel will use again in Translations. And there’s hint too of a vestigial faith in the power of religious ritual.

When the scene changes and we see Grace, fragile and broken – a marvellously expressive performance by Justine Mitchell, her face a panorama of ever-changing feelings, her voice forever on the point of breaking. What grips us about her story is how different her memories are from Frank’s and we are forced to question the truth of everything he has just told us. The couple are in fact married, but Frank has always refused to publicly acknowledge her as his wife. ‘One of his mean tricks was to humiliate me by always changing my surname,‘ she tells us: ‘It became Dodsmith or Elliot or O’Connell or McPherson – whatever came into his head.’ Most poignantly, we hear of Grace’s pregnancy and its tragic end. She gives birth to a stillborn baby outside a village, Kinlochbervie, in the remote Scottish north, forced to bury him in a field.

Teddy, their friend and promoter, remembers that event too, even to the exact date when they journeyed from Ireland: ‘the last day of August’ – Friel fascinated by the ancient Celtic power of Lunasa. But Teddy’s memory is in many ways more overpoweringly sad as his relationship with the couple becomes clearer. Teddy had begun his monologue playing up his good ol’ cockney persona. And Nick Holder dazzles as the ever-engaging old showman, still soft-shoe shuffling around to their favourite song, The Way You Look Tonight. He’s very funny indeed reminiscing about his former stage acts: ‘Maybe you remember him, Rob Roy, The Piping Dog? … how many times in your life has it been your privilege to hear a three-year-old male whippet dog play Come Into The Garden, Maud on bagpipes and follow for his encores with Plaisir D’Amour.’ Friel’s relish for speech rhythms out-Pinter’s Pinter. But beneath all this joviality lies his quiet tragedy.

Faith Healer leaves the audience with questions – was it Frank’s dying mother or his father he tended to in their last moments? Was Grace not the meekly submissive woman she and Frank have portrayed her as? And what exactly happened in the near-epiphanic moment in the courtyard of that Irish pub? But this uncertainty is far from unsatisfying. It’s a confirmation of what we all know – everyone’s memories and perceptions are different. And beyond this, perhaps miracles do occasionally happen.

A miraculous production, immaculately directed by O’Riordan with a perfect cast who wholly inhabit their roles. Riveting story-telling.

Run until 13 April 2024