Faith Healer at the Booth Theatre
Twenty-seven springs ago, in April 1979, Brian Friel's Faith Healer was given twenty performances before closing. The formidable José Quintero directed, and James Mason starred, with Clarissa Kaye and Donal Donnelly. But the play bombed. Writing in the April 16 issue of The New Yorker, Brendan Gill praised the production but complained that it was miked. His review gives little hint, however, as to the unpopularity of the play. Perhaps it is suggested in his first sentence:
People who complain of the scarcity in contemporary theatre of plays that are well written and well made had reason to be grateful last week for the arrival, at the Longacre, of Brian Friel's Faith Healer.
We have come a long way since 1979, to a livable truce between two Broadway camps, and serious theatre is no longer the preserve of Off-Broadway. Top-billed stars can apparently revive anything. Julia Roberts is the strange cause of a revival of Richard Greenberg's Three Days of Rain, which I remember finding not particularly interesting at MTC almost ten years ago - notwithstanding the presence of Patricia Clarkson and the convincingly wet rainfall. Ralph Fiennes has done the same for Faith Healer, with Star Wars veteran Ian McDiarmid (Palpatine) to help out; for those impervious to Hollywood marquees, Cherry Jones will be an appetizing lure. It's hard to believe that, this time, Faith Healer won't be a success.
Continue reading about Faith Healer at Portico.
