'Faith Healer' explores fleeting memories, truth

It is a part of life that many of us dread. We visit a dying parent who no longer remembers us. To bring mom or dad back from encroaching oblivion, we sing, recite nicknames, recall shared memories -- anything to trigger something that will let us have another sentient moment together.

In Brian Friel's "Faith Healer," actor Sally Wingert evokes such an encounter solo. Her Northern Ireland-bred character, Grace, who ran off with the title figure, has returned home to reconcile with her stroke-afflicted father. As she reaches to touch the invisible face of the fading father, Wingert's Grace is a swirl of heartbreak, resignation and forgiveness.

The scene is the most gripping in "Faith Healer," which opened Friday at the Guthrie Theater. It telescopes the themes and issues in this Brian Friel play about the slipperiness of memories and truth. In fact, while we take Grace's words about her father at face value -- Wingert imbues the emotions that underlie them with a deeply felt truth -- much of what she recalls is in question.

Other things that she tells us in the direct-address style of the play are related differently, if not contradicted outright, by the two other characters in the play -- her husband, Frank Hardy (Joe Dowling), and his manager, Teddy (Raye Birk).

Friel plumbs Irish identity, memory and culture in his works, and "Faith Healer" continues those themes in a series of poetic, interconnected monologues about the high and low moments that Frank, Grace and Teddy shared on the road as Frank "performed" -- their word -- in Welsh and Scottish villages.

There was much pre-opening buzz about "Faith Healer" because it marked the American acting debut of Guthrie director Dowling, who directs the play with Ben McGovern.

His turn as Frank is an admirable one, especially when he delivers the names of Welsh villages in an incantatory style that makes them sound like they are accompanying sacraments. And he displays a range of imitative voices as he reels off Friel's sheaves of text.

Still, Dowling the actor rarely sheds the mantle of authority and commanding mien that have served him so well in his leadership role in order to deliver his character's troubled soul. His Frank wears a dark, shabby suit that looks slept in, but he does not deeply evoke a fading figure the two others describe as often besotted and crouched with a whiskey bottle between his legs.

Birk delivers a terrific performance as talent-spotter and manager Teddy. His is the funniest monologue in the bunch, with tales about "a miss mulatto and her pigeons" as well as a bagpipe-playing whippet. I could have sat there all night listening to Birk's Teddy, except that as he spoke, he drank, and as he drank, I started to worry about his bladder.

Rohan Preston • 612-673-4390