Three perspectives, three monologues
An unlikely trio is separated by a common story in TWN's "Faith Healer"
By Marli Guzzetta + Independent Arts Editor
Faith healing is a fickle art in Brian Friel's beautifully written and dramatic "Faith Healer," going up at the Theatre Workshop this week.

From left: Pam Diem (Grace), John Knox-Johnston and John DeVaney (Frank) star in TWN's "Faith Healer" this week.

"Basically, it's the story of an artist, of a man who has a magnetism that people want to be around. He kind of fell into it, and never really knows when it's going to be on or said the play's director, Molly Martin."

The play consists of three monologues from each member of dthe story's trio: Frank, the charismatic man whose talent for healing ebbs and flows as he travels the Irish countryside (played by John Devaney); Teddy, his optimistic and avuncular manager (John Knox- Johnston) and his wife/mistress, Grace (Pam Diem).

"The place also fictionalizing different characters in his life. Whether they're the peple he heas, his, his father, his wife, his manager - because he questions himself, ultimately. He doesn't know who he is, so he surrounds himself with fictions," Martin said.

PHOTOS BY ROB BENCHLEY/The Independent

Born in Ireland, Devaney has returned to Irish recordings and films to prepare his broguish character and his understanding of small-town Ireland. "It's really been about trying to imagine what a desperate, hardscrabble life that was - trying to make a living by coming to these towns and overwhelming people with my supposed spiritual, extraterrestrial powers to heal them."

DeVaney said his character questions himself constantly as to whether or not he's a snakeoil salesman. "It haunts him," said Devaney. "And what torments him most is that he never knows when it's going to work, and there's a lifelong terror of that uncertainty."

This self-doubt, Devaney said, was a window for him into the character's humanity. "Some people have said that Friel is talking very much about an artistic experience, the uncertainty of knowing where inspiration will come from," he said.

From an affluent family in Northern Ireland, the character of Grace is, of course, taken with Frank's charisma, and leaves her cushy life to be with the man she loves, enduring remarkable hardship in the process. "To me, it's about being married and devoting your life to an artist when you're not an artist yourself," Diem said. "A lot of the time an artist's work is their life. You're not their life, and that's very much Grace's story. She always comes second."

Devaney and Knox-Johnston are veteran TWN performers, while this is Diem's second performance on island and first with the TWN. Martin met the actress, a graduate of Harvard's School of Drama, on Nantucket several summers ago, while Diem was still an undergraduate at New York University's Tisch School of Performing Arts.

Friel has created each adult character as an only-child to the effect of augmenting their isolation onstage - the characters never appear with one another - and also heightening the sense of need each character has for the other two. (Coincidentally, all three of the cast members are also only children.) Martin said that reconciling this joint-separatism was her biggest challenge.

"In rehearsals, we investigated every line. I'd bring up what each character says about the other, so they're aware of what's going on with them, even when they're not onstage," Martin said.

All the characters relate the same events, but in different Roshomonlike versions. "Once the audience leaves, they'll have their own questions about who was telling the truth,"

Martin said. I

When: Thurs. - Sat., July 5-7,

Wed. - Sat., July 11-15; and Wed. - Sat., July 18-21; all shows at 8:30 p.m., except for the

matinee on Sun., July 15,

at 3 p.m.

Where: TWN Mainstage, downstairs

at the United Methodist

Church, 2 Centre St.

Cost: $25; An opening night

cocktail party precedes the July 5 show at 7 p.m. at the Brigham

Galleries, 54 Centre St.; $50

includes your admission to the show. For more information

or for tickets, please call 228- 4305 or visit www.theatrework shop.com or the TWN box office, downstairs at the United Methodist Church.