Review-Faith Healer (4.22.06)

Faith Healer (Saturday, 4.22.06)
Booth Theatre, New York, NY

By: Brian Friel

Starring: Ralph Fiennes (Frank Hardy), Cherry Jones (Grace Hardy), Ian McDiarmid (Teddy)

Set up as a series of monologues, “Faith Healer” tells the story of Frank Hardy (Fiennes), a faith healer scraping out a living traveling through Scotland and Wales, giving hope to the desperate. A shyster, a showman, whatever he was, you have to take whatever he says with a grain of salt.
As Hardy tells his story, one can see why he was a “success” as a faith healer, if that’s what you can call it. Hardy is captivating and charismatic, even if he is also sleazy and unbelievable. But what is fascinating is his storytelling – not so much his story, but the way he tells it.

The story begins to fill in a bit in the second scene, when Grace, Hardy’s lover, begins to tell her story. Grace’s story overlaps with Hardy’s, but with a different set of details. The story fills in even more when Teddy (McDiarmid), Hardy’s manager, tells his story. The play comes full circle when Hardy’s delivers his final monologue.

Friel is his usual poetic self, employing the same beautiful language and method of storytelling that makes him one of the twentieth century’s great playwrights. What’s interesting about this play is that, for all the beautiful storytelling, the story itself is not all that interesting. What’s fascinating is watching how the stories intertwine; how four separate monologues weave a single cohesive story.

“Faith Healer” also gives an opportunity to watch great actors give great speeches. Leading this terrific acting excursion is Ralph Fiennes, who is simply captivating as Hardy. Fiennes inhabits the character. Fiennes’ charisma allows him to fill the huge stage with his presence. He plays with the language. It is a terrific performance.

Also excellent is Ian McDiarmid as Teddy, Hardy’s manager. McDiarmid finds the most humor in his portrayal. McDiarmid sheds all recollection of his most famous role – the Emperor in Star Wars – and delivers a tour de force performance.

The weak link, if it can be believed, is Cherry Jones, who for all her wonderful talents is simply miscast as Grace. Jones seems out of place, and really not very believable either as an Irish woman or as Hardy’s lover. She doesn’t even bother to put on an Irish (or English) accent, which is jarring juxtaposed as she is between the performances of her British cohorts. In any event, although her performance hits its stride about halfway through and she even reaches an emotional crescendo, Jones seems so out of place that her story – setting aside the story itself – almost seems unrelated to that of either Hardy or Teddy. Perhaps she would have been better off trying to be understated instead of putting it all out there.

In the end, this production of Faith Healer is beautiful in many ways, and a great vehicle for some excellent monologues. As a cohesive piece, though, in this production, it falls just a little short. The four separate pieces don’t really go together, and one almost yearns to get the actors all on the stage at the same time to give it a cohesiveness that it lacks. That said, it is still wonderful to see such terrific actors spitting forth Friel’s dialogue. While it doesn’t live up to its hype, any day when you get Fiennes, Jones and McDiarmid on the same stage (even in succession instead of at the same time) is a day to celebrate.