May 05, 2006

'Faith Healer' a 'fantastic theatrical experience'

Faith Healer with Ralph Fiennes, Cherry Jones and Ian McDiarmid opened on Broadway last night to (mostly) excellent reviews from the critics praising the revival of Brian Friel's series of monologues about a flawed man with a gift to heal.

Directed by Jonathan Kent, "Faith Healer" has a limited run through July 30 at the Booth Theater, located at 222 W. 45th St., map.

A sample of the reviews:

Post - "Play or not, 'Faith Healer' is, to use one of its key words, a 'fantastic' theatrical experience, outdistancing the current Broadway pack by a country mile, with three performances to be treasured in memory, and reinforcing Friel's position as one of the three or four finest living English-speaking playwrights."

New York Times - "Playing the title role in Brian Friel's great play 'Faith Healer,' which opened last night in a mesmerizing revival at the Booth Theater, Ralph Fiennes paints a portrait of the artist as dreamer and destroyer that feels both as old as folklore and so fresh that it might be painted in wet blood. The self-lacerating vanity that has always been central to Mr. Fiennes's presence as a film actor ('The Constant Gardener,' 'The English Patient') has rarely been to put to such powerful use."

Variety - "Structured as four consecutive monologues from three characters who at no time share the stage, this 'Rashomon'-style feat of complex storytelling examines overlapping events from conflicting perspectives. While that approach was audacious for its time, nontraditional narrative has since become more common in mainstream theater. But 'Faith Healer' still requires its audience to work -- and is all the more enthralling for it."

Star Ledger - "Here's a consumer tip: Read the play before going to see it. Not all of the play. Maybe three-fourths. Save the ending for a surprise. Friel's rich, lyrical writing offers a very beautiful read. In performance, director Jonathan Kent's staging doesn't quite get Friel's story over. The production is classy but not especially compelling. Unless they listen up very, very intently, viewers unfamiliar with this 1979 saga of a sorrowful man of miracles and the two souls who love him may not grasp entirely how it turns out."

Newsday - "For some people, such a narrative may feel like an untheatrical slog through somebody else's distant troubles. My mind understands such a reaction to Brian Friel's exquisitely written (even overwritten) 1979 drama "Faith Healer." But my gut could not disagree more."

Sun - "Unfortunately, director Jonathan Kent and two-thirds of his cast - a typically brooding Ralph Fiennes and an atypically brassy Cherry Jones - have taken this uncertainty as a cue to belabor every potentially meaningful filigree, resulting in a dismayingly leaden revival of a play that deserves better."

Hollywood Reporter - "It includes three of our finest theater performers: Ralph Fiennes, making his first Broadway appearance in more than a decade; Tony winner Cherry Jones; and Ian McDiarmid, best known as Emperor Palpatine in the "Star Wars" films. Rather surprisingly, it's the latter performer who will garner the lion's share of acclaim and awards here. Making his New York theater debut as Teddy, the loving, downtrodden manager of an itinerant faith healer, McDiarmid delivers a tour-de-force comic performance that is as moving as it is amusing."

Associated Press - "Hardy is a role Fiennes was born to play. With his matinee-idol looks, Fiennes is the right actor for this vaguely overtheatrical, slightly gone-to-seed Irishman who travels the small towns of Scotland and Wales attempting to cure the afflicted."

USA Today - "In the title role, Ralph Fiennes, returning to Broadway for the first time since his Tony Award-winning turn 11 years ago in Hamlet (also directed by Kent, originally for the UK's Almeida Theatre), again delivers the nuanced intensity that makes him one of our most compelling stage and screen actors. His Frank is at once defeated and defiant, a ravaged man who nonetheless retains the fire that drew, and singed, his enablers."

May 5, 2006 08:04 AM in Broadway

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