The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
Faith Healer
Pitlochry Festival Theatre, October 17 to November 3
With Pitlochry Festival Theatre’s recently-installed artistic director Elizabeth Newman having brought in a new autumn play to complement the theatre’s traditional summer season and Christmas show, this first instalment bears proven quality throughout.
The play itself is Faith Healer, one of the most highly-regarded pieces by the acclaimed Irish dramatist Brian Friel, while the title role is taken by the excellent actor George Costigan.
“Elizabeth didn’t need to talk me into it, she asked me and I bit her hand off,” says Costigan, taking a break from rehearsals with the director in Pitlochry.
“I’ve been dying to work with her and it’s proved to be a wonderful decision. The rehearsals are extraordinary and Pitlochry is great, aside from the fact I hung my washing up this morning and then it rained. I think washing lines are a hope in Pitlochry, a fantasy.”
Raised in Salford, Costigan arrived at cult fame in 1986 with his role as Bob in Alan Clarke’s working class comedy romp Rita, Sue and Bob Too, and has been a regular on British screens ever since – most notably in films including Shirley Valentine and Calendar Girls, and most recently in Gentleman Jack, Happy Valley and Line of Duty.
Anyone who hasn’t seen him perform on stage is in for a treat. Costigan, who lives in France (so work is “all away from home”), was part of the original cast of Blood Brothers; more recently he’s been in King Lear and Long Day’s Journey Into Night at Glasgow’s Citizens, and the The Duchess (of Malfi) at Edinburgh’s Lyceum, and he was typically magnetic in each.
“I suppose there might be people who wouldn’t want to go to Pitlochry to work, but I did,” he ponders, “and let’s not forget, this is a stone-cold masterpiece by one of the greatest writers of the theatre. In the end, all that actors can really tell you about is the quality of the writing, because we have to learn it – all you have to do is listen and make your mind up about what you felt, which is a lot simpler. And when it’s as beautiful as this, it learns like a dream.”
Part of a classic oeuvre which includes Friel’s Translations and Dancing at Lughnasa, Faith Healer takes the form of four monologues about the travelling title character Francis Hardy, and asks multiple questions about how we perceive the world. Costigan is joined by actors Richard Standing and Kirsty Stuart, the latter of whom also shone in The Duchess (of Malfi).
“I think you’ll have an evening like you’ve never had in the theatre,” says Costigan, with tangible excitement. “Every time you see a great play done well, there are still bits of it which make you think, ‘that’s just what that’s like, just how I feel at the moment’. That’s why we all seek it out.”