OnStage: A leap of 'Faith'

Finances have gotten so tight at the Guthrie that Joe Dowling has had to cast himself as an actor.

"Yes, soon we'll do all one-man shows and I will run back and forth to every theater," Dowling said, playing along with the gag during an interview. In a more serious vein, he said he wants Twin Cities actors to know he has no intention of taking work away from them. He's particularly sensitive because the Guthrie is hiring fewer actors in this down-budget year.

Dowling takes the stage this week in Brian Friel's "Faith Healer," one of the Irish master's finest plays. The Guthrie director is one of three actors -- with Raye Birk and Sally Wingert -- who deliver lyrical monologues centering around Frank Hardy, an itinerant preacher who has wandered across the British Isles with a healing ministry. Dowling plays Hardy.

"I'm not planning to make it a once-a-season event," he said. "This relates to my own history with Brian Friel."

On the event of Friel's 80th birthday last year, Irish radio and television asked Dowling to talk about the playwright's legacy. "Faith Healer" had been one of Dowling's signature productions in the early 1980s, with Irish actor Donal McCann playing the Hardy role. Dowling lived with McCann's intense portrayal ringing in his head for such a long time that he could not imagine another actor in the role. When McCann died 10 years ago, Dowling said, "I thought I would never look at 'Faith Healer' again." That included a 2006 Broadway revival with Ralph Fiennes, Cherry Jones and Ian McDiarmid.

"I just could not force myself to watch it," Dowling said.

But as he revisited the play to prepare for last year's radio interviews, Dowling said the script's emotional power surprised him. He wanted to stage it again, though he wondered if he could stand to hear Frank Hardy in a voice other than McCann's. Then it occurred to him. Would the sound of his own voice drive him crazy? He floated the idea to his wife, Siobhan Cleary, and when she didn't laugh him out of the room, Dowling thought he might be onto something. He asked Wingert and Birk, two actors he has worked with for many years, to see if they would do the show with him. He then asked designer Frank Flood, a frequent collaborator, and finally, Friel offered his encouragement. Dowling was set to go.

Live! Onstage!

Dowling is not the first Guthrie artistic director to take the stage. Alvin Epstein and Douglas Campbell, both better known for their acting, appeared in plays here.

Still, the marketing department was primed to make hay, trumpeting the news that "Joe Dowling makes his American acting debut."

Dowling is amused. "I don't know if there is a vast public waiting for me," he said.

There was, however, a rehearsal room waiting and Dowling admitted a bit of trepidation when, for the first time in 21 years, he stood and delivered. Ben McGovern, who programs the Guthrie studio theater, is assisting Dowling in directing this show -- casting his eyes on the actor.

"He's been enormously helpful," Dowling said. "He's challenged some of my assumptions."

And even though Dowling is in charge of the production, he noted that McGovern has told him, " 'At some point, you're going to have to yield and become the actor.'"

Despite the stakes, Dowling said he does not fear opening night. Tech rehearsals and previews have softened that glare from the days when a show went from dress rehearsal to the naked opening ("44 years ago, those were terrifying").

Growing up, all Dowling wanted to do was act. He did so for 10 years at the Abbey in Dublin and though he never made a conscious decision to move into directing, it happened naturally when he began a youth theater program. He continued to act as his directing career took over. In the early 1980s at the Abbey, he went on in "The Man Who Came to Dinner" when the leading man went down with a heart attack the day after opening. With no understudy, Dowling picked up the role and liked it so well he stayed on for 15 weeks.

Still, he insists, his turn in "Faith Healer" is an anomaly.

"I wasn't searching for a vehicle," he said. "It was the other way around; 'Faith Healer' found me."

Graydon Royce • 612-673-7299