Faith Healer, an absorbing drama by the Irish playwright Brian Friel, receives a fine production at Rep Stage under the direction of Kasi Campbell.
The play is a study of three characters. Frank Hardy is an Irishman who has toured Scotland and Wales for 20 years claiming to be a faith healer. Traveling with him were Grace, his mistress who later becomes his wife, and a London man called Teddy who serves as their manager, publicist and general factotum.
The three never interact on the stage but speak to the audience in monologues. They all describe the same incidents from their past, but the narratives are colored by their individual personalities and distorted by self-delusion. The audience is left to piece the story together.
It is a story of poverty, drink, obsession, pregnancy, loss, conflict and disillusionment. At the end, a tragic incident, never clearly described, changes all three lives.
A superb cast brings the three characters to life. Nigel Reed endows Frank with a con man's charm and intelligence. Frank is a dreamer, a man to whom truth is irrelevant. He is mesmerized by the poetic names of the Welsh and Scottish villages in which he has worked, and he likes to recite strings of them like litanies. He doesn't believe that he has any gifts except to deceive and exploit people, but he has had occasional unexplained successes.
There was one memorable session in which he apparently cured 10 people of maladies. The audience is led to wonder whether he might have some power that he doesn't recognize.
As Grace describes their life together, it becomes plain that much of what Frank told the audience was lies. Grace comes from a good family in Ireland. Her father was a solicitor and later a judge. She qualified as a solicitor but threw her career away when she took up with Frank.
Now she is trying to cope with a breakdown that left her a psychological wreck. She vilifies Frank, charging that he analyzed, used and consumed her with no regard for her feelings.
But the audience can see that she is obsessed by him. Julie-Ann Elliott brings emotional power to the role, convincingly depicting all of Grace's emotional states.
Teddy, played by Bruce Nelson with outstanding comic timing and characterization, is shrewd and businesslike, with a showman's bravado. He brings the show down to earth, presenting a welcome contrast to the self-involvement of Frank and Grace.
He is smart enough to recognize Frank's talent, but not smart enough to understand it.
By and large, we get the truth from Teddy. Like the others, he has self-delusions, but they are banal and excusable. Although a confirmed small-timer (before Frank he managed only animal acts), he thinks of himself as inhabiting the same world as Chaplin and Olivier.
At first, he speaks of Frank and Grace in professional terms.
He sums up their problem neatly: Grace loves Frank, Frank loves his work. But ultimately he reveals his intense regard for them as human beings. Here Nelson shows a depth of emotion fully equal to his skill at comedy.
Nelson's East End London speech is flawless. Reed and Elliott speak in convincing Irish dialects, but Elliott's working-class inflections are out of character for the daughter of a professional family.
The heavy, dark wooden set -- furniture, platforms, picket fences and large beams -- is intended to give an impression of the crude, rustic surroundings in which the characters spent their lives. Unfortunately, it misses. In Britain and Ireland, trees are scarce, lumber is used sparingly, and villages are made of brick and stone.
Costumes, sound and lighting (by Rosemary Pardee, Neil McFadden and Dan Covey, respectively) are all excellent and appropriate to the script.
Rep Stage at Howard Community College, 10901 Little Patuxent Parkway, Columbia, presents "Faith Healer" in the Theatre Outback through Nov. 24. Show times are 8 p.m. Friday; 2:30 p.m. (except Nov. 9) and 8 p.m. Saturday; and 2:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Sunday. An after-show discussion with the actors, director and dramaturge will be held tomorrow and Nov. 15. Information and reservations: 410-772-4900.