Oak Park Festival Theatre Presents Brian Friel's Faith Healer
Oak Park Festival Theatre presents Brian Friel's Faith Healer at The Performance Center, 1010 W. Madison St. in Oak Park. Faith Healer previews March 10 through 12, and runs March 13 to April 16. Performances are at 8:00 p.m. Thursday through Saturday and at 5:00 on Sundays. There will be an additional performance at 8:00 p.m. on Wednesday, April 13. Members of the press are invited to attend on Sunday, March 13 at 8:00 p.m.
Faith Healer is a mesmerizing mystery told in four monologues. It is a riddle, the honest fiction of the three mutually contradictory truths of Frank Hardy (the eponymous Faith Healer), Grace, his wife-or mistress-and Teddy, his manager. Friel's riveting and haunting work entices the audience to become the fourth character and to tease out the answers. Many have hailed Faith Healer as Friel's masterpiece, surpassing even Dancing at Lughnasa. Friel at 80 is regarded as Ireland's greatest living playwright, the force behind the new Irish Theatre Renaissance.
Faith Healer is directed by Belinda Bremner, who directed OPFT's critically acclaimed 2008 production of Dancing at Lughnasa and this year's Jeff Recommended Of Mice and Men. This Jefferson winner was a founding member of both ShawChicago and the Body Politic Ensemble and worked with the Goodman, Court, Northlight, Stories on Stage, and St. Nicholas, and has taught at the Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University for more than twenty years.
Bremner has this to say about Faith Healer: "Despite the many matters that divide us, we all share the need to know the balance in our lives between our actions and chance, and to believe in belonging somewhere to someone. That is why we tell our stories. This play's three characters are each witness to a fourth, most important, character: the audience. The audience weighs each version of the events around which three lives coil in a Celtic knot-each and all true, but only when the audience chooses its own truth. It's baffling and beguiling, hilarious and heartbreaking, so smart and so very simple. It is a demanding piece both of its artists and its audience but, just like each of our lives, what glorious and urgent work."
Ticket prices are $25 for adults and $20 for students and seniors. Three-play season subscriptions are available for $70 (full price) and $50 (students and seniors). Tickets may also be purchased by calling the box office at 708-445-4440.