Faith Healer review – Brian Friel revival tests its audience’s belief

King’s Arms, Salford
David Thacker’s production of the Irish playwright’s ambiguous play is over-emphatic in parts but transfixing in quieter moments

This is how it always goes for Frank Hardy, the faith healer of Brian Friel’s 1979 play Faith Healer. An audience has gathered in a room like this one, above a pub, and waits to be spellbound by his performance. He recalls his travels through remote Welsh and Scottish villages with his wife, Grace, and manager, Teddy. For some, he seemingly, miraculously, cures their ailments. For others, it is, indeed, just a performance. Chicanery, as his father-in-law calls it.

The beguiling trick of Friel’s play is this ambiguity. Here, though, Colin Connor’s performance makes Hardy’s shame too emphatic. In an oversized suit that sags like the “tatty banner” bearing his name, he shuffles so restlessly it’s as if he’s trying to shake himself out of his own body. Even the glare of the light seems cruel and exposing. Self-loathing is manifest; what is not is a strong suggestion that he might be capable of the inexplicable.