Faith Healer

Uma Productions

1524 W. Division

http://www.umaproductions.org/

 

 

Faith plays an important part in our lives: We have faith our partner won’t cheat on us; the Cubs will win the World Series; I’m certain my theatre degree will lead me to a successful career on Broadway.  Yet unfortunately we often find our resolute faith squashed when our presumed certainties prove unequivocally false: you catch your partner in bed with another man; the Cubs have a sucky season; you make a career as a flight attendant. 

 

But faith’s antithesis, doubt, is comparably everlasting, as there might never be a definitive answer: did he really stay late at the office every day last week or was it just an excuse; are these jeans slimming or do they make my ass look big; does my mom love my brother more than me?

 

Playwright Brian Friel’s Tony-Award-winning play, Faith Healer, explores and takes advantage of the opposites of faith and doubt.  Faith Healer is a stunning piece of work.  The language is brash yet lyrical; the characters are recognizable yet oddly inaccessible.  And the tale that Friel lays out over the two acts keeps one riveted to their seat, listening to and pondering every detail. 

 

Faith Healer tells the story of “Francis The Fantastic” (Chris Hainsworth), an Irish faith healer who travels around England with his lover Grace (Danica Ivancevic), holding faith-healing performances that are organized by his promoter, Teddy (James William Joseph).  Traversing a time span of approximately 30 years, the drama culminates in a tragic ending that is never fully explained.  The work is brilliantly laid out in four separate monologues, the three actors never on stage with the other.  This structure is what makes the play so mesmerizing - as we hear each person’s separate story of the same events, it is uncomfortably evident that each person’s retelling does not jive with the other’s.  We are left with doubts as to whom is really telling the truth.

 

Uma Production’s overall presentation of this play is stellar.  The director, Mikhael Tara Garver, has does a stunning job guiding the actors through this difficult work.  All of the nuances of the story are fully explored.  It is clear that Garver spent a lot of thought and time into the coaching and vision of the actors and the story.  Perfectly cast, all three actors are equally amazing, most notably Ivancevic’s empathetical portrayal of Grace. 

 

Early on in the play, Francis the Fantastic explains that those people coming to him to be cured of their maladies actually arrive not to be cured, but to satisfy their doubts as to whether they’ll remain sick or blind or lame for the rest of their lives.  This production of Faith Healer, however, leaves no doubts in one’s mind.  It is a highly-recommended must-see. 

 

Rating: Highly Recommended (4 stars)

 

 

Reviewed by Scotty Zacher

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