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Faith Healer

Faith Healer

★★★

Cambridge Arts Theatre

FAITH HEALER at the Cambridge Arts Theatre

★★★

Faith Healer

“Paul Carroll in the title role – framing the whole and holding the play together – is excellent”

London Classic Theatre presents a revival, forty-plus years on, of Brien Friel’s well thought of play directed by Michael Cabot. Recognised by some as one of the great contemporary plays, it’s a curious piece made up of four monologues given by three characters. With no linear action to follow, the audience must piece together an understanding of what has gone before from the recollections of the three characters. Recollections that are often shady, with memories unreliable, events half-forgotten or deliberately reframed over time.

The Faith Healer of the title is Frank (Paul Carroll) – a man with a gift, or a mountebank depending on your interpretation. With his wife/mistress Grace (Gina Costigan) and Manager Teddy (Jonathan Ashley), the three of them have travelled for years across Wales and Scotland from village to village. A battered banner is displayed “The Fantastic Frank Hardy – for One Night Only”. The loudest laugh of the evening is that an earlier tagline describing Frank as “the seventh son of a seventh son” was revised because it made the poster too expensive.

A giant mirror at the rear of the stage is tilted down to reflect the floor upon which the characters pace (Set & Costume Designer Bek Palmer). Three large stone paving slabs surrounded by shingle represent the distorted shapes of Wales, Scotland, and Ireland.

Frank reminisces. The two other characters sit at the side of the stage, listening in. We wonder later how this can be possible so perhaps they exist here just in Frank’s memory. He points and gesticulates, picking out members of the audience – just as Frank the Faith Healer might have done in his shows of yesteryear. He is dressed respectably in a three-piece suit and trilby, that perhaps has seen better days.

Grace rises, dressed in a drab brown frock and cardigan, and takes her turn. Gina Costigan is amusingly skittish in her movements, but her vocal delivery is sometimes unclear. As she pauses midsentence and breaks the flow, the speech loses direction. With a seeming lack of emotion in describing some heartfelt things, she sadly fails to hold our attention. What we do learn though is that much of what we have heard so far might not be as straightforward as we thought.

The third monologue is from the debonair Teddy. Providing a splash of colour in his smoking jacket, yellow waistcoat and red bowtie, Jonathan Ashley confidently prowls the stage like a stand-up comedian regaling the audience of his stories of past glories. [Shades of John Osborne’s The Entertainer, here]

Brien Friel gives us four excellent examples of an unreliable narrator, more often found in the written word rather than the spoken, and the audience must draw their own conclusions as to what has really happened. But the production is uneven, three out of the four monologues are overlong, and all three actors are guilty of making unnecessary restless movements. Paul Carroll in the title role – framing the whole and holding the play together – is excellent. He commands the stage. His lilting brogue, rich in quality, rises from a near whisper to a booming baritone and has us holding on to every word.


FAITH HEALER at the Cambridge Arts Theatre

Reviewed on 31st October 2023

by Phillip Money

Photography by Sheila Burnett

 

 

 

 

Previously reviewed at this venue:

 

A Voyage Around My Father | ★★★ | October 2023
Frankenstein | ★★★★ | October 2023
The Shawshank Redemption | ★★★ | March 2023
The Homecoming | ★★★★★ | April 2022
Animal Farm | ★★★★ | February 2022
Aladdin | ★★★★ | December 2021
The Good Life | ★★ | November 2021
Dial M For Murder | ★★★ | October 2021
Absurd Person Singular | ★★★ | September 2021
Tell me on a Sunday | ★★★ | September 2021

Faith Healer

Faith Healer

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A Voyage Around my Father

A Voyage Around my Father

★★★

Cambridge Arts Theatre

A VOYAGE AROUND MY FATHER at the Cambridge Arts Theatre

★★★

A Voyage Around My Father

“This production is as cosy as a Sunday afternoon TV period drama”

It is over fifty years since this play was first performed and the celebrity status of its author, John Mortimer, has surely waned. The size of this first night audience, however, suggests that he is still fondly remembered by many.

In a role played in the past by Olivier and Guinness, Rupert Everett triumphantly takes on the role of Father. The blindness, of which he will never speak, comes upon him with a blinding flash and a percussive explosion. From then on, Everett shows brilliantly his lack of sight by fumbling for a teacup, tapping his stick to find his chair, and displaying a disturbing blank stare into nothingness.

Ever by his side is his devoted wife (Eleanor David) whilst the Son – or Boy as his parents call him – is kept mostly at a distance. The primary story is that of the Son, confidently portrayed by Jack Bardoe. Narrated by him, linking scenes that take us through his school years – dressing down into short trousers, blazer and cap – following his father into a career in law and taking his first steps into married life. Of the Father, we see him promenading his garden, inspecting the flowers via a spoken description from whomever is nearest. There is a hit-and-miss running gag about counting earwigs. The Father’s blindness keeps him distant and aloof. He is irascible, prone to outbursts and provocative to those closest to him.

An excellent supporting cast is confidently moved around the stage by director Richard Eyre but the short scenes rarely involve more than a handful of characters at one time. Julian Wadham’s declamatory school Headmaster and Calum Finlay’s school pupil Reigate are cameo performances worthy of mention. Two scenes – both with echoes of wartime – fall somewhat flat. Perhaps the poignancy of one and the humour of the second have been lost to time. Everything lifts again with the arrival of the sparky Elizabeth (Allegra Marland), soon to be married to the Son despite the misgivings of the son’s Father.

The predominantly bare set (designer Bob Crowley) is a beauty. Images of thick green foliage, the sun hazily glinting through the leaves, evokes the halcyon days of summers gone by. This production is as cosy as a Sunday afternoon TV period drama. There is much to be enjoyed, particularly in the performances of Everett and Bardoe, but little of any relevance.


A VOYAGE AROUND MY FATHER at the Cambridge Arts Theatre

Reviewed on 17th October 2023

by Phillip Money

Photography by Manuel Harlan

 

 

 

 

Previously reviewed at this venue:

Frankenstein | ★★★★ | October 2023
The Shawshank Redemption | ★★★ | March 2023
The Homecoming | ★★★★★ | April 2022
Animal Farm | ★★★★ | February 2022
Aladdin | ★★★★ | December 2021
The Good Life | ★★ | November 2021
Dial M For Murder | ★★★ | October 2021
Absurd Person Singular | ★★★ | September 2021

A Voyage Around my Father

A Voyage Around my Father

Click here to read all our latest reviews