043 – Faith Healer, by Brian Friel
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Frank Hardy is a faith healer who is only occasionally able to heal. In fact nine times out of ten nothing happens. Frank, his long-suffering, indefatigably loyal wife Grace, and his manager, Teddy, tour small towns in Scotland and Wales hoping that Frank’s gift may reveal itself to the hopeless few that turn up to be cured. Grace and Teddy are tethered to Frank by their lack of alternatives and by his intermittent charisma and charm, despite his indifference and cruelty. When they have finally exhausted their chances in Britain they return to Ireland, where on a night in a pub in Donegal they reach the end of the road.
Each of these three characters tells their own version of their tawdry and tragic story in a sequence of monologues that together form Irish playwright Brian Friel’s masterpiece, Faith Healer. Although the premiere of the play in New York in 1979 was not a success, the Abbey Theatre in Dublin gambled on restaging it shortly thereafter, and it was a critical and popular triumph. The seminal 1980 Abbey production was directed by its young Artistic Director Joe Dowling, who recently returned to the same theatre more than 40 years later to direct a landmark revival of the play.
I am thrilled to be able to talk with Joe Dowling about a magnificent play that he has a unique knowledge of.
Joe Dowling
Joe Dowling was born and educated in Dublin where at the age of 28 he became the youngest Artistic Director in the history of the Abbey Theatre. He followed his time at the Abbey by running the Gaiety theatre in Dublin, before moving to North America, where in 1996 he was appointed Artistic Director of the prestigious Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis. In his twenty years in charge at the Guthrie he directed more than 50 productions, including Shakespeare, American classics by O’Neill, Miller and Williams, as well as Irish plays of course, including Faith Healer in 2009, which he not only directed but also appeared in.
Joe recommended The Gigli Concert by Tom Murphy
Photo by Joan Marcus
The Footnotes to our episode on Faith Healer include observations on the elusive faith of the healers and the healed, and on the emotional truth of our memories.
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113 – Arcadia by Tom Stoppard
Published 24th August
Tom Stoppard’s 1993 play, Arcadia is viewed by many as his finest play, renowned for the breadth of its intellectual interrogations and its formal invention. The play is a structural masterpiece of ideas, as well as a teasing detective story, joyous comedy, and emotionally rich exploration of love and loss.
As we record this episode a wonderful new production of Arcadia is playing at the Duke of York’s theatre in London’s West End, following its acclaimed run at the Old Vic theatre earlier this year. I am delighted to share the challenge and the pleasure of exploring Stoppard’s dazzling drama with the director of the new production, Carrie Cracknell.
112 – Glengarry Glen Ross by David Mamet
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David Mamet’s modern American classic, Glengarry Glen Ross, is a blistering commentary on the cut-throat reality of the American dream, and its poisonous impact on those who have bought into the myth and machismo of that dream. The play had its world premiere in the small Cottesloe theatre at the National Theatre in London in September 1983, and was first performed in New York the following year, winning the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Mamet also wrote the extended screenplay for the star-studded 1992 film version.
As we recorded this episode a new production of the play was playing at the Old Vic theatre in London, with an all-female cast. This is a particularly provocative idea, because one of the primary themes of this play is masculine identity, and the salesmen in this Chicago office do not hold back in their display of machismo.
To explore Mamet’s unflinching slice of 1980s dog-eat-dog capitalism, I am joined by arts journalist Mark Lawson.
111 – The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui by Bertolt Brecht
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Bertolt Brecht’s ‘gangster spectacle’, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, is both an exuberant and funny piece of theatre, and a chillingly topical political satire. Set in the 1930s Chicago of Al Capone, Brecht presents a parody of the rise of Hitler through the character of the gangster Arturo Ui. The play is a universal cry for vigilance against the rise of unscrupulous, populist leaders who threaten democratic societies and global peace.
As we recorded this episode a new production of the play by the Royal Shakespeare Company was playing in Stratford-upon-Avon, starring Mark Gatiss as the title character.
I am delighted to be joined by both the show’s translator, playwright Stephen Sharkey, and by Brecht scholar, Professor Tom Kuhn, to guide us through Brecht’s political parody.
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