Faith Healer. Pic by John Zinn__________
Playwright: Brian Friel
At: UMA Productions at Chopin Theatre, 1543 W. Division
Phone: 773-347-1375; $15-$20
Through Feb. 10
Striving for accuracy can be too much of a good thing. Just look at UMA Productions' punishing-on-your-posterior production of Brian Friel's riveting drama, Faith Healer.
Director Mikhael Tara Garver and her design team want you to literally feel how it would have been for Welsh and Scottish villagers crowding to see an itinerant Irish 'faith healer' performing medical miracles in the 1930s. So Garver and set designer Brian Sidney Bembridge jam audiences into a small room built inside the Chopin Studio Theatre via a back-alley entrance. The simulated verisimilitude is handsomely crafted, but likely to be uncomfortable.
That's too bad, because Friel's Rashomon-like quartet of often-contradictory monologues between the healer Frank, his co-dependent agent, Teddy, and mistress/wife, Grace, work their best with your full attention. If you're aching and fidgety, you'll be less likely to savor Friel's lush descriptive imagery and his brilliant piecing together of his characters' troubled lives ( and tragic ends if you choose to interpret it that way ) .
At least the acting company assembled is top notch, even if some are cast against type. James William Joseph as the cockney second-rate agent Teddy is one prime example. I have nothing to fault in Joseph's physical performance, from his jovial accent to his deeply felt emotional interpretation. It's just that the dandified and handsome Joseph seems physically wrong for an edge-of-poverty promoter who would sleep in fields when the going was rough and whose last great client was a woman who could speak pigeon. Perhaps director Garver didn't want to lay the tragedy on any heavier with another seen-it-all sufferer, but Joseph's young and slick essence feels out of place.
Chris Hainsworth looks more like his beaten-down character. As Frank, Hainsworth just about gets the reluctant man with a mystical talent he cannot fully comprehend or control. So what if his Irish brogue sounds suspect at times? Hainsworth, as Frank, certainly gets the emotional truths down as he latches on to his bottle of whiskey as if a crutch to help him explain his gypsy-like existence.
As Frank's conflicted yet devoted spouse Grace, Danica Ivancevic certainly wins your hearts. As directed by Garver, she may burst about the meeting hall space a bit too much animatedly for an at-edge woman described for her calm demureness by the other characters. But Ivancevic's resentful emotional longing and tragic sense of loss as Grace ( particularly as she describes the death of her child ) certainly rings very true.
With UMA's Faith Healer, the joys of seeing live and intimate theater can be countered by its cramped and uncomfortable surroundings. ( I was all right since I had a cushioned chair. ) This Faith Healer certainly is rewarding, but only if you're willing to take on the potential pains.