Tag: David Thacker

FAITH HEALER

Small Theatres
Colin Connor as Frank in Faith Healer at The King’s Arms. Photo credit: Shay Rowan

Written by Brian Friel

Directed by David Thacker

The King’s Arms

It’s not very often I have the time or indeed the inclination to go see the same play twice in one week. Faith Healer at The King’s Arms on opening night was so perfectly rendered that I had to catch it again before it finished its short run. Brian Friel often writes of the rural Northern Ireland that I grew up in and he absolutely captures the mercurial aspects of a community where people have co-existed while always seeing the same world through such different prisms. In Faith Healer he takes 3 characters and gives them lengthy monologues which highlight their very different perspectives on a series of key moments they all experienced together. Within the story telling of each character there are constant threads that connect and confirm each other’s story but numerous elements that differ or conflict challenging the audience to draw their own conclusions. Director David Thacker uses every inch of the space to create an immersive vibe where the performers are placed amongst the audience so the storytelling feels up close and intimate. The result is mesmerising as the truth and the fantasy meet, merge and fade into the ether.

Small, new theatre companies such as Rising Moon Theatre rely on Fringe theatre spaces and here the venue is perfect for this play about these itinerant travellers who move around the country selling hope or as Frank says perhaps bringing the gift of letting go of the last vestige of hope. Seated on fold up chair and absorbing the slightly shabby faded grandeur of the space evokes the kind of venues that may have hosted Frank as the fantastic Frank Hardy…Faith Healer. Grace is his wife or mistress who may be from Yorkshire or Northern Ireland. They are accompanied by Frank’s manager Teddy who is a Londoner with a history of nurturing vaudeville acts.

Vicky Binns as Grace in Faith Healer at The King’s Arms. Photo credit: Shay Rowan.

The cast all give thoroughly committed performances. Vicky Binns wrings every ounce of emotion from the tortured and traumatised Grace. This is a deeply emotionally fragile woman who is untethered by grief and yearning. Watching Grace emotionally unravel is not an easy watch but Binns imbues her character with such a plaintive poignancy and brittle dignity that her monologue is utterly absorbing. Colin Connor is Frank a wounded bear of a man who spews bluster and passion and frustration peppered with moments where his face lights up as he recalls a night in Wales where the stars aligned and he cured everyone in the room. Connor is a masterful storyteller who clearly relishes this role of the Healer both feared and reviled whether perceived as the real deal or a master of chicanery.

Rupert Hill as Teddy in Faith Healer at The King’s Arms Photo credit: Shay Rowan.

Rupert Hill is on a real creative roll recently taking the lead in his self -penned play HUSK at Hope Mill Theatre, directing an excellent production of COCK at 53Two and starring in In The Time Of Dragons at The Edge Theatre. Here he sits silently throughout the first half intently watching and listening as husband and wife relive pivotal moments from their past. A stillborn baby birthed in the back of a van in the back of beyond and buried in a field. Fights and recriminations as they travel Scotland and Wales seemingly exiled from their homeland until the great return to Ireland. Then a dark horrific night in Friel’s fictional Ballybeg where a crooked finger is cured and this momentary success sets of a terrible series of events. Hill brings a light touch to the second half weaving humour and pathos with charm and aplomb. He lights up the stage as he tells tales of past successes with such acts as a bagpipe playing whippet which seems to come alive as he describes it. Hill’s character Freddy may be down on his luck and also bereft of his colleagues but ultimately he is imbued with more hope and faith than the fantastic Frank Hardy could ever muster.

This is the real deal when great writing, a good Director with vision and a strong cast open to taking risks come together and create theatrical alchemy. This production hit all the right notes with its immersive feel ramping up the intimacy and inviting the audience to have faith in what happens on stage and trust the process. Having been on the receiving end of rural Irish faith healers on numerous times growing up its a strange sensation when it works. It feels like a warm sense of satisfaction that envigorates the mind and body and restores the spirit with a sense of bliss. If Frank nailed it in a hall in Wales and cured everyone there then I think Thacker and his team may have achieved a similar success rate in a pub in Manchester.

The King’s Arms 15th – 19th February 2025

The Last Yankee

Small Theatres

Bolton Library Theatre

Written by Arthur Miller

Directed by David Thacker

This production of The Last Yankee feels like a particularly special opportunity to see a play by iconic American director Arthur Miller. Staged in a newly developed and very intimate theatre space, this is a chance to see Miller’s work directed by the man who has directed more of his plays than anyone else. David Thacker knew Miller personally and directed the 1993 British première of The Last Yankee as his last production at The Young Vic.

The play looks at how two men and their clinically depressed wives respond to time spent in a psychiatric hospital. The central theme is one of disappointment and how that can corrode our sense of self and our relationships with others. Miller himself had experience of being husband to a woman vulnerable to depressive episodes during his marriage to Marilyn Monroe. The play also uses much of Miller’s absorption with how the past informs the present.

The first act is a slow burn of social awkwardness and tentative male bonding as the very different husbands try to make sense of mental illness. Frick, a successful businessman and Hamilton, a carpenter descended from a founding father of American democracy find nothing that unites their wives. Rich/Poor. Kids/No kids. Lost optimism/Swedish lack of optimism. These men are lost without a premise to explain why their wives are psychiatric patients. Patrick Poletti as Frick and David Ricardo-Pearce as Hamilton are utterly convincing as two very different men both broken in their own ways by their attempts to cope with their wives’ mental illness.

The wives appear in the second act having formed their own connection. Karen is a first time patient and is discomobulated by the medication and terribly vulnerable in her desire to be accepted. Played with sweet desperation by Annie Tyson, she portrays a wife who imagines herself a disappointment to her husband having been cruelly rejected by her own mother. It is only through music and dance that she fully comes alive with childlike glee that her bewildered husband struggles to comprehend. The scenes where she performs are tender and filled with tentative hope from a woman who had “lost her optimism.”

Juliet Aubrey captivates as the frequent flier, savvy to the effects of all the medication. Although bewildered as to what, if anything is actually wrong with her, she dryly acknowledges that “Anybody with any sense would be depressed in this country.” Brittle and full of nervous twitching energy, she exudes charm. Still beautiful despite having seven children and feeling “a torn off rag of my old self” she is drug free for 21 days after 15 years. As her and her husband exchange truths about their life together, a picture appears of loss, potential never fully realised, disappointments and resentments. These moments on stage are there in so many relationships but highlight our human vulnerability to cope in a changing world that we may struggle to understand.

Stark staging creates a sterile environment for these fragile humans to come together and is a fitting backdrop to play out messy, confused emotions. A bed is always occupied by a third unmoving, possibly catatonic women who is a poignant reminder of just how cruel depression is. The Last Yankee is a deeply satisfying watch and Thacker’s rich understanding of Miller’s work ensures that this intimate staging works beautifully.

Bolton Library Theatre 28th Feb – 16th March

Images Joel Fiddes