How we handle the world is an act of faith; We trust the words of others. Brian Friel’s masterpiece, faith therapyIt was first performed in 1979, during a violent time in Northern Ireland, and is in part a study of what happens when one person’s narrative undermines another’s and the facts disappear. Who to believe? So what can faith accomplish? There’s even the bleak possibility that living will turn out to be, in some ways, a confidence trick. It’s wonderful to be reminded, in Rachel O’Riordan’s careful, flat and earnest production, of Friel’s sheer grit and brilliant monologues from three actors who are never together on stage (unlike the rapid-fire back-and-forth of most contemporary dramas). ) and experiencing a distorted deja vu through different versions of reality.
Does Frank Hardy, who travels to remote parts of Wales and Scotland and perform miraculous cures, have a talent or is he a fraud? A question he asked himself. Declan Conlon plays him convincingly (and yes, the word has some weight in context), wearing a shabby black suit, a sign of respectability that isn’t respectable enough. And as you can see, Conlon seems to respect her character, wants to give her the benefit of the doubt, wants to be her advocate. He does not convey the charisma (“special grandeur”) or the cruelty that his wife Grace describes – but if so, how much can we trust her account of him?
Justine Mitchell is outstanding as Grace. He inhabits the role so completely that it’s hard to imagine anyone else could – could – play it. You can see right away that Grace is in trouble. She’s sitting slouched like a grown schoolgirl, in her casual shoes, her hair messy, and a bottle of whiskey next to her. She has a self-approving way of nodding that seems to stem from pain, and she tells us about the burial of her stillborn baby in a field in northern Scotland (Frank will later say, incidentally, that it was “the one”). barren”). Like him, she poignantly uses a list of the names of the villages where he performed as a prayer, an incantation – Friel’s poetic touch.
Nick Holder is terrifically funny as Frank’s Cockney manager Teddy. He’s a boring, drunken, Humpty Dumpty man in a tattered vest, but he never goes beyond pathetic laughter. “Fantastic” is his favorite word, and he repeatedly waves his finger or raises both hands as if to calm us down or dissuade us from objecting to him. Colin Richmond’s thoughtful design is thrifty: a faded banner promoting the faith healer’s show; chairs as if in a church hall; an anonymous space – mental state rather than precise location. But all roads in this unmissable game lead to the fictional Donegal town of Ballybeg and the healer’s final homecoming.
You might assume that spending more than an hour in the bedroom with an unhappy teenager wouldn’t provide much fun. At first glance at the bedroom, painted in a particularly foreign mauve: an empty room with no view, designed by Jasmine Swan. But Rosie Day Instructions for Youth ApocalypseOriginally a novel and first performed by Day at Southwark Playhouse in 2022, this film is tonally reminiscent of Jacqueline Wilson’s work for children and is extremely clever in its treatment of the unhappiness of a traumatized 15-year-old boy.
What made the show special was that the girl, Eileen, remained on stage throughout (it was theater monologue week). She is played by the very outspoken Charithra Chandran. Bridgerton fame) and his self-confidence dovetail oddly with the assumed fragility of his character, but it can be defended as a classic adolescent stance. Her hair is tied tightly into a ponytail; He wears red patent leather DMs, a striped shirt and blue jeans. She recently lost her sister Olive to anorexia. Olive is said to have died while eating yorkshire pudding – it’s a detail that strikes a slightly tense comedy, a false note, but you can understand what Day is doing and why.
There’s more to this: vivid sickness, angry teenage jokes, cocky defenses. Lively directed by Georgie Staight, the production continues with interviews 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 teenager’s sense of isolation. There are also audio clips of a scout leader played by Maxine Peake with perfect disdain that recalls Joyce Grenfell’s classic comic sketch Kindergarten: George, Don’t Do That.
The comical decorations can sometimes be redundant, but the liveliness ensures that the show never becomes overwhelming. And Day has plenty of emotional insight that highlights how anorexia affects not just the patient but the entire family. The play is written in such a way that Eileen’s pain for her sister gradually emerges in her defenses. And she’s great at having some of the girl’s “friends” reveling in her sadness while privately enjoying their own superior luck. Chandran is at his boldest in a superbly written scene where the girl loses her virginity to a man she meets online. It disturbingly captures the conflict between innocence and experience that can be a hallmark of growing up. Eileen complains that being an adult is a thing of “telling people you’re okay when you’re not.” “Good” turned out to be an empty word.
Star ratings (out of five)
faith therapy ★★★★
Instructions for Youth Apocalypse ★★★