Review 4 U CRITIC'S CHOICE for Theater: . . ."Faith Healer" (Keegan), . . .

Review 4 U 'Best Acting':. . . Eric Lucas/Kerry Waters Lucas/Mick Tinder (Keegan), . . .    

Brian Friel's "Faith Healer" is the Keegan Theatre's first offering for their New Island Project which will produce Irish works with minimal settings and strong characterizations.  Nothing could be a more bold choice than this unconventional narrative which unfolds in three monologues.  Like "Rashomon", each character narrates respective versions of the same story...disassembled by their memories into many contradictory pieces.  Eric Lucas is charming as Frank, the itinerant faith healer/performer/shaman, who travels through Scotland and Ireland.  Lucas gives a lyrical performance as he rolls his lines like a musical incantation of Celtic sacred places where Frank travels even as he questions Christian biblical events in his life and finally to a quick transcendence from his horrific death into the mysterious hereafter.  Kerry Waters Lucas conveys both the despair of addiction and the intensity of conviction in her role as Grace, his wife/mistress, who is also reliable as his "grace" in life thoughout his rocky journey.  Mick Tinder, as Teddy the cockney manager, provides much humor as talks about a bagpipe playing whippet and he also tells the basic travel tale with even more poignancy as an involved outsider.  Friel's resonant language invites comparison to a musical work...like a symphony...where each movement stands alone.  In this play, each character must also connect to the whole.   The motifs tell the story without any particular order regarding the dimension of time...rather unlike that in the unfolding of a more operatic story line.  The Keegan has once again brought a difficult but powerful work to its Gunston Two stage that brings the complex richness of theater and belief directly into the heart. (To 12/23) (Reviewed by Celia Sharpe)

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