The metaphor of a faith healer as a human whose gift is a burden was most notably used in Irish theatre by Brian Friel. In what is probably his best play, he extended the metaphor to cover the act of artistic creation itself as a burden. Jim Nolan's new work does not extend the metaphor to include the faith healer as creative artist. However, the work of faithhealing by Valentine Greatrakes in 17th-century Co Waterford is clearly drawn as a kind of parallel to theatre in the contrast between Greatrakes's sense of burden and what he sees as the liberation of drama. For him, this is embodied by the travelling players of Mathias Everard's English theatre company and, particularly in Greatrakes's perception, by Angel Landy (who is the eponymous centre of the evening) and the gift of her singing voice - without which, it is posited, she would be nothing.
When Angel loses her voice she is brought by Everard to Greatrakes to be healed so that her gift may be restored. But Greatrakes has lost his gift and is no more able to restore Angel than to cure the thousands of sick and crippled in search of the cures he can no longer dispense. Those he cannot cure must leave and die.
Nolan's play is deeper and more complex than can be conveyed in so brief a synopsis: it poses questions of identity and destiny, of the need for innocence if miracles are to happen, of loyalty and responsibility, as well as of the burden of what Greatrakes perceives as the gift God has granted him. Dramatically, the problem is that the author's words do not always lend theatrical wings to his ideas, particularly during a rather dense first act in which John Lynch's characterisation of the healer lacks any sense of power or mystery or even generosity: it is all just a gloomy burden to the man. And, in the second act, when he renounces his gift, he remains subsumed by a kind of gloomy cloud.
Ben Barnes's direction does not inject much theatrical life into the piece, remaining thoughtfully reflective rather than actively dramatic, and Jamie Varian's overly sylvan setting, while it provides some beautiful images, somehow dissipates rather than concentrates the reflectivity. The company generally lacks attack or projection, although the performances - Julia Lane as Greatrakes's nagging wife unable to understand her husband's reluctance to heal; Michael Hayes's Michael Maher who, healed by Greatrakes, becomes his loyal servant; Catherine Walsh's Lizzie (Michael's sister, also in service in the house); Robert O'Mahony's Everard; and Chris McHallem's Thomas, the steward in the house - are all clear and straightforward. Laura Rogers's Angel is about the only character in which there is any sense of mysticism or mystery, and she provides a compelling presence in an otherwise elusive evening.
Fortunately, Peter Fallon's Gallery Press has published the text, and this should provide some elucidation of the elusiveness over the next day or two.
Runs until June 9th. Booking on 01-8787222.
