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COPYRIGHT 2006 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.
"The artistic life is a long, lovely suicide," Oscar Wilde said. The aphorism came to mind as I was watching the Gate Theatre production of the four eloquent monologues on the paradox of talent which make up Brian Friel's "Faith Healer" (imported from Dublin to the Booth, under the elegant direction of Jonathan Kent). The subject of the monologues is the Irish faith healer Frank Hardy (Ralph Fiennes)--the "Fantastic Francis Hardy," as the threadbare banner behind him proclaims. Frank's speeches are the first and last of the evening; through their evasions, omissions, and confessions, they chart the trajectory of his self-destruction. Frank's wife, Grace (Cherry Jones), and his manager, Teddy (the superb Ian McDiarmid), are the other witnesses to the healings he calls his "performances"--and to the price they all pay for his occasional miracles. Together, these three voices conjure up a shabby world that smells of booze and Primus stoves and stale halls deep with dust and wishes.
As the play begins, coals gutter suggestively in the grate of an upstage fireplace, and the rumpled Frank stands before us in the crepuscular gloom. He carries in his jacket pocket a weathered newspaper clipping, testimony to a "remarkable event" in a Methodist church in a small Welsh town where he cured ten people of ailments "ranging from blindness to polio." As Frank, Fiennes is outstanding. He exudes a natural, reticent magnetism; gaunt and thin, his sensitive features belie a fierce...
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