How we get by in the world is an act of faith – we take the words of others on trust. Brian Friel’s masterpiece, Faith Healer, was first performed in 1979, during a violent period in Northern Ireland, and is in part a study of what happens when one person’s narrative undermines another’s and the truth slides out of view. Who to believe? And what anyway can faith accomplish? There is even the bleak possibility that living itself might prove, in some ways, to be a confidence trick. It is wonderful, in Rachel O’Riordan’s attentive, level and serious-minded production, to be reminded of the sheer nerve and brilliance of Friel’s monologues from three actors who are never together on stage (unlike the rapid to and fro of much contemporary drama), and to experience, through their varying versions of the truth, a distorted deja vu.
Does Frank Hardy, touring remote corners of Wales and Scotland performing miracle cures, have a gift or is he a fraud? It’s a question he asks himself. Declan Conlon plays him convincingly (and yes, the word has weight in context) wearing a shabby black suit, a stab at respectability that is not quite respectable enough. And Conlon, you can see, respects his character, seems to wish to give him the benefit of the doubt, to be his defender. He does not convey the charisma (the “special magnificence”) nor the cruelty that Grace, his wife, describes – but then, how far are we to trust her account of him?
As Grace, Justine Mitchell is phenomenal. She inhabits the part so completely that it is hard to imagine she could play – be – anyone else. You see straight away that Grace is in trouble. She sits hunched like a grown-up schoolgirl, with workaday shoes and untidy hair and a bottle of whiskey for company. She has a way of nodding in agreement with herself that seems to arise out of pain, and she tells us about the burying of her stillborn baby in a field in northern Scotland (Frank will later remark, in a casual aside, that she is “barren”). Like him, she movingly uses a list of the names of the villages in which he has performed like a prayer, an incantation – Friel’s touch of the poet.
Nick Holder is a terrific comic turn as Teddy, Frank’s cockney manager. He is a drab, drunk, Humpty Dumpty of a man in a slovenly waistcoat, but never more than a belly laugh away from pathos. “Fantastic” is his favourite word and he wags his finger repeatedly or holds up both hands as if to calm us or discourage us from remonstrating with him. Colin Richmond’s thoughtful design is sparing: a faded banner advertising the faith healer’s show; chairs as if in a church hall; an unnamed space – more state of mind than precise location. Yet all roads in this unmissable play lead to the fictional Donegal town of Ballybeg and the faith healer’s homecoming, his final address.
You might assume that spending more than an hour in a bedroom with an unhappy teenager would not deliver much entertainment. Especially after a first glance at the bedroom itself, which is painted an alien mauve: a depleted room without a view, designed by Jasmine Swan. But Rosie Day’s Instructions for a Teenage Armageddon, originally a novel and first performed by Day at Southwark Playhouse in 2022, is reminiscent in tone to Jacqueline Wilson’s work for children and is chirpily intelligent in its treatment of the unhappiness of a traumatised 15-year-old.
What makes the show special is that the girl, Eileen, holds the floor throughout (it has been theatrical monologue week). She is played by a likably forthright Charithra Chandran (of Bridgerton fame), and although her confidence sits oddly with her character’s presumed vulnerability, this could be defended as a classic teenage stance. Her hair is pulled tightly into a ponytail; she wears scarlet patent leather DMs, a striped shirt and blue jeans. She has recently lost her sister Olive to anorexia. Olive is said to have died eating yorkshire pudding – a detail that introduces a slightly strained comedy, a false note, although you can see what Day is doing and why.
There is more in this vein: a lively morbidity, edgy teenage gags, smart-ass defences. Buoyantly directed by Georgie Staight, the production folds in exchanges with Eileen’s parents and a friend (Shelley Conn, Philip Glenister, Isabella Pappas), but these well-acted scenes are interactions on video – a distancing device that deepens the sense of teenage isolation. There are also audio clips from a scout leader, played by Maxine Peake with a pitch-perfect condescension that recalls Joyce Grenfell’s classic comic sketch Nursery School: George, Don’t Do That.
The comic garnishes might at times be surplus to requirements, but the liveliness ensures the show is never depressing. And Day has plenty of emotional insight, highlighting the way anorexia affects not only the sufferer but the entire family. Her play is written in such a way that Eileen’s grief for her sister shows only gradually through her defences. And she is great on how some of the girl’s “friends” feast on her sadness while privately basking in their own superior luck. Chandran is at her bravest in a superbly written scene in which the girl loses her virginity to a man encountered online. She disturbingly catches the collision between innocence and experience that can be a feature of growing up. Eileen complains that “telling people you are OK even when you are not” is what being an adult seems to be about. “Fine”, it turns out, is an empty word.
Star ratings (out of five)
Faith Healer ★★★★
Instructions for a Teenage Armageddon ★★★
