The idea of the artist as divinely inspired visionary isn't afforded much attention these days. We're more likely to see our poets and novelists as attention-hungry celebrities or public gadflies or hard-working literary athletes. But Brian Friel, in his brilliant, starkly beautiful play Faith Healer, revives the romantic notion of the artist and gets away with it.
Through his character Frank Hardy, he offers us that seemingly obsolete image of the tortured, misunderstood, abused and short-lived genius. True, Hardy is a faith healer, a man who has the occasional power to bring health and normalcy to the ill and disabled. But it's clear enough only a few minutes into the play that faith healing is just Friel's metaphor for doing art and that Hardy belongs not with Aimee Semple McPherson and Oral Roberts but with Keats and Rimbaud, Van Gogh and Picasso. Hardy even calls what he does a "performance," and his manager Teddy compares him to other "artists" he's handled.
And Hardy has a particularly Romantic problem: He doesn't know where his art comes from, doesn't know why it works (when it does) and is drinking himself into oblivion as he faces the question. He has a gift, that's certain; but why was he able to heal 10 people, including the lame and the blind, in a Welsh church at one moment, when on another day he couldn't even assuage an old woman's arthritis?
It's the dilemma of a prophet: Am I speaking these words, or is Someone Else speaking through me? Is art a skill that one acquires, or a gift — or a burden?
There's more to Faith Healer than this meditation on art: Other subjects include love and memory and homecoming and childbearing. But in the fine production of the play currently at Sarasota's Banyan Theater, it's the artist theme that figures most prominently.
Watching Eric Hissom's complex performance as Frank Hardy, we're put in the presence not of a TV evangelist more interested in money than in souls, but of a nervous, self-doubting poet, locked in the unending argument with his own talent, bent double by the weight of it, drinking his way to forgetfulness. Watching the two other actors — Lisa Morgan as Frank's utterly devoted companion Grace and the splendid Geoffrey Todd as the business manager who might otherwise be handling animal acts — we're reminded not of the greedy parasites on a cash cow but of the admiring acolytes of an erratic sorcerer, the enthusiastic, flawed entourage of a troubled genius.
Maybe Friel is commenting on his own outsize talent: With plays like Philadelphia, Here I Come; Translations and Dancing at Laghnasa, he's proved himself to be one of our greatest living playwrights. But whatever his motivation, he's created in Faith Healer one of the few contemporary texts that dares posit the ancient view of the artist as divine instrument. And he's done so with a uniquely literate play, one whose language is every bit as special as its subject.
The play's structure is unusual, offering us monologues instead of dialogue, telling the same story multiple times but with small discrepancies that we can't possibly reconcile. First we hear from Frank, then Grace, then Teddy and finally from Frank again. If one had to make a conventional chronology out of it, their story would go something like this: Irish-born Frank Hardy discovers sometime early in his life that he has the occasional ability to heal the sick and disabled. He attracts to himself two companions: wife (or mistress, it's not clear) Grace and manager Teddy.
Together they travel around Wales and Scotland, offering Frank's talent to all who need it, and then collecting money from the healed on the few occasions when that talent doesn't fail. Before joining Frank, Grace was a lawyer: Her judge father has accused her of running off with a "mountebank" and has virtually disowned her. As for Teddy, before joining Frank he managed Rob Roy, the bagpipe-playing dog, also a troubled artist.
These characters tell us many things, but three subjects come up repeatedly: the day Frank healed those 10 sufferers in Wales, the day Grace gave birth to a stillborn son and the trio's dangerous return to Ireland, where Frank faced a savage crowd. By the time the play's over, we've entered Frank's mystery, his agonized attempt to know who he is. If we don't quite know the answer, still we know as much as he does.
And we know that we've witnessed a superior production. The three Banyan actors are all top-notch, though Hissom as Hardy is a little less than totally persuasive. Hardy's the most complicated of Friel's fascinating characters, and Hissom has the difficult task of impersonating a man in the throes of great self-doubt, a magician who's not sure whether his magic is real. Hissom's solution is to play his character's melancholy and tentativeness, but what's missing is the other side: the confidence and even arrogance when the Force is with him.
There's nothing at all wrong with Morgan's Grace, though: She's a tough, powerful woman who's so deeply in love that she doesn't think she could possibly survive if Frank left her. And Todd as Teddy is nothing short of marvelous, bringing humor to a somber subject, showing at the same time a vulgar misunderstanding of his client's significance and a simple decency and humanity that's a relief in a world of extremes.
Director Chris Dolman wisely trusts his three actors (and Friel's formidable language) to hold the stage without extraneous "business," and Richard E. Cannon's abstract set, of what might be the frame of a barn, is attractive and evocative. Jared E. Walker's costumes, from Frank's dark suit to Teddy's smoking jacket, could hardly be better.
And Banyan's Faith Healer could hardly be more impressive. If you're willing to ponder, for a moment, the idea of the inspired artist, or if you just love fine language, you won't want to miss it. Let me warn you again, the play consists of nothing but monologues. But there's so much matter in these speeches, so much to think on and feel, you won't leave disappointed. From Sheridan to Shaw, Ireland has repeatedly brought us the most eloquent writers in English. And it's done so again in the person of Brian Friel.
If you haven't already discovered him, you won't want to miss this opportunity.
This article appears in Aug 22-28, 2007.