Faith Healer examining notions of loyalty and belief

REVIEW BY JUDY MURPHY

An in-house production of Brian Friel’s Faith Healer is the ambitious undertaking from the Town Hall Theatre for its autumn schedule, with a lengthy tour of the country planned following its opening run in Galway.

This production kicked off in Galway on Friday night and runs until this Saturday, September 3.

Faith Healer is unusually structured in that its three characters – Frank, Grace and Teddy – never encounter each other. Instead, in four separate monologues, they tell of incidents from their past and it’s fascinating to see how their various versions of the same story differ, sometimes slightly, sometimes in a major way.

The tormented Frank, the Faith Healer of the title, played by Lalor Roddy, is first up. As he attempts to analyse his gift and his life, we are never sure if he believes he possesses healing powers or not. He’s followed by his wife Grace (Ali White), who has sacrificed her career as a solicitor to follow the impecunious Frank in, what her father calls ‘his chicanery’.

Frank presents one version of their lives, but after Grace tells her harrowing story of their travels and his treatment of her, we are not longer quite sure what is true – which is a brilliant storytelling device and keeps the audience gripped.

Finally, there’s Teddy, their English agent, who knows he should have left the pair years ago, but who stayed loyal, for reasons he cannot explain. His interpretation offers another insight, revealing facets of the Hardys that they are unaware of, and it also injects vitally needed humour as well as sadness.

All three characters list of the names of the small towns in Scotland and Wales that they visited over the years so that faith healer Frank could carry out his work. As they do so, it’s almost like they are praying a litany. That sense of religion – or faith – is at the core of the play.

Faith Healer raises fascinating questions about truth, loyalty and faith but its structure and spartan design makes it a challenging play to stage.

While this production, directed by Andrew Flynn, engages for large sections, there are moments when the audience is overpowered by the sheer torrent of words. Faith Healer’s topics are weighty, with the only real lightness being offered by Teddy, excellently played by Rod Goodall.

The relationship between the characters and audience fails to fully ignite, particularly in the case of Frank and that’s the play’s real weakness.

Lalor Roddy’s positioning on stage and the overly dim lighting during his two monologues leaves us struggling to see him. He is alone on a stage which is bare except for a few chairs and an old poster, so the focus is totally on him and his story. Frank is a character of the shadows, but for the play to work, the audience needs to connect with him in a way that doesn’t happen in this production.