Review: FAITH HEALER at Schoolhouse Theater

The day before penning this review, I happened across a documentary on iconic writer J.D. Salinger, in which a biographer says of The Catcher in the Rye that it was like Salinger “stripping all the layers from his soul.” 

“Interesting,” I mused, because that process of self-abnegation also could be said of one Francis “Frank” Hardy, the title character of Irish dramatist Brian Friel’s exotic stage classic The Faith Healer. 

The dark and illuminating play that has been heralded as one of the “100 Most Significant” of the 20th Century (Royal National Theatre poll) and one of the 40 “Best Plays of All Time” can be seen through Dec. 22 at The Schoolhouse Theater in Croton Falls (theschoolhousetheater.org). 

It is a splendid production, expertly directed by the theater’s Artistic Director, Owen Thompson, and starring Victor Slezak as Frank Hardy, Elisabeth S. Rodgers as his wife Grace, and Michael Daly as his manager Teddy. Bram Lewis is Producing Director at Schoolhouse.

I use the word exotic as high praise for this mesmerizing memory play because it is anything but ordinary in its storytelling. Of course, in the hands of a master Irish playwright like Brian Friel, who also gave us Dancing at Lughnasa and Philadelphia, Here I Come!,  what we’re witnessing is storytelling on steroids. 

Mr. Hardy is a so-called Faith Healer who plies his trade around the exurban vestpocket villages of Wales and Scotland, with Teddy and Grace in tow.  

Each of the three characters gets his and her time alone on stage to regale us with monologues that recount their respective versions of an inflection point in the peripatetic career of “The Fantastic Francis Hardy, Faith Healer.” Those are the words emblazoned on a promotional poster that is the only stage piece not strewn about the floor of a lounge pub, as are upended chairs, fallen leaves, a turned-over lamp, and other debris. 

In what amounts to a triptych of character portraiture, each of the three – never on stage together – paint pictures in the lyrical language that is the lingua franca of Irish writers.

Transfixed, we absorb their respective perspectives on a night in a lounge bar in the Irish village of Ballybeg, in County Donegal, where Mr. Hardy’s vaunted prowess in healing the afflicted was put to the ultimate test: a crippled young man bound to a wheelchair.

Even the Faith Healer’s crowning achievement from another time, which saw him “cure” 10 unfortunates in one fell swoop – pales next to the Ballybeg challenge he encountered, at the behest of stragglers from a wedding reception in the lounge bar where the Hardy troupe is staying. 

Throughout Faith Healer, there are questions aplenty that arise. Is faith healing a real thing or the invention of mountebanks? Can it cure disease or physical impairment? Is it a learned talent, a heavenly gift (like the veil of a psychic), or merely a performative sleight-of-hand? Mr. Friel does not purport to dispense lucid answers to the above, and if he doesn’t, then surely his creations – Francis Hardy, Gracie, Teddy – don’t know either. They play it as it lays, as Francis lays hands on those seeking physical salvation.  

Each of the actors fleshes out their captivating character’s singular persona with sharp distinction. Sometimes their recollections affirm each other’s versions, other times not. Common to all of them is a loneliness, a resignation about the gray, grim life they have chosen — or perhaps which has chosen them. 

As Francis Hardy, Victor Slezak weaves a spell that pulls in the audience to hang on his – or rather Mr. Friel’s – vivid word pictures. On first appearance, turned out in an all-black ensemble worthy of an undertaker or gangster, he nails down the tone with a fascinatingly morose authority. 

When Mr. Slezak gazes intently into the audience, with an almost unsettling stillness, it’s not hard to buy what he’s selling, even if it becomes increasingly apparent that he himself is not quite sure what he’s selling: the outcome of his ministrations on his supplicants is predictably unpredictable.  Will the next person in line be healed, he wonders? Who knows; it’s the journey, not the destination, that matters to Francis and his meager entourage of two.

In sharp contrast to Mr. Slezak’s tightly-coiled and penetrating turn as the intense Francis Hardy is Michael Daly’s expansive raconteur, Teddy, who should be the third wheel to Francis and Grace, but functions more like a brake to keep the team from derailing themselves through alcoholism and Frank’s misogyny toward Grace, whom abusive Frank mocks as his mistress and calls her by names other than her own. Yes, the Faith Healer who exists to lift up others betrays a sneakily sadistic streak to those closest to him. I think of it as among the layers he strips away, like J.D. Salinger, to plumb his soul.  

Swathed in a bright red smoking robe, the ingratiating Michael Daly provides an upbeat counterbalance to the shadowy fatalism that informs Frank’s and Grace’s respective monologues. 

Teddy waxes philosophical about the difference between talent and brains, invoking such show business legends as Laurence Olivier as full of one but not the other. Teddy considers Frank’s an artist, but is his talent God-given or performative, not unlike a dog act he once represented, the bagpipe-playing whippet Rob Roy. 

Where Frank’s story is foreboding and Teddy’s tends toward the grandiose (made manifest by Mr. Daly’s formidable physical presence), Ms. Rodgers invests Grace’s oral history of her experience alongside – and against – Frank with searing heartbreak. She’s not nattily dressed like Frank, nor luxuriantly swathed like Teddy. Her threadbare outfit is a plain shirt dress, cardigan, and flats. She's at her wit's end and the realism of her condition is stunning.

When a play is rooted strictly in powerful monologues that are written by a master of the form like Mr. Friel, it demands virtuoso acting, which is precisely what Ms. Rodgers and her castmates deliver to the audience. 

Grace is a lawyer-turned-depressive and a bundle of anxiety. She chain smokes and polishes off a bottle of whisky that she downs from a teacup, as if a vessel of misdirection will mask her addiction. Ms. Rodgers takes us through a heart-rending display of emotions that cannot help but elicit pity as she lays bare a Frank that invites disdain toward his boorishly sexist behavior. Still, her devotion to him persists.

In the end, who knows, maybe they end up together still, just not of this earth.

Schoolhouse Theater’s staging of Brian Friel’s Faith Healer is the kind of singular theatrical experience on which the pantheon of Irish playwrights have built their rich reputation – storytelling on steroids indeed. You might call their collective talent an article of faith.

The richly atmospheric Lighting is by Dennis Parichy. The stark yet busy Set Design that effectively mirrors the disarray of the threesome’s existence is by Owen Thompson. Keven E. Thompon is Production Stage Manager. The spot-on Costumes are by Heidi Leigh Hanson. Sound Design by Jessica Klee and Owen Thompson. Sound Engineer is Jessica Klee. Scenic Painter is Isabelle Faette. Will DeVary is Assistant Director. Anthony “Tony” Burrill Hairston is Assistant to the Producer. Sofia Lavion is Head of Wardrobe/Running Crew. 
 

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