The present, 1979
A pub, a lounge bar really, outside a village called Ballybeg, not far from Donegal Town.
Letter from Donal McCann to Friel on hearing he has been cast in the 1991 production, accompanied by envelope with a signed drawing by McCann (15 Aug 1990)
Three rows of chairs – not more than fifteen seats in all – occupy one third of the acting area stage left. The seats are at right angles to the audience. On the backdrop is a large poster made of some fabric, linen perhaps and is soiled and abused.
The Fantastic Francis Hardy
Faith Healer
One Night Only
Remembering one night in the lounge bar. One character on stage at a time. Frank stands in front of rows of chairs. Grace is sitting on a wooden chair beside a small table on which are ashtrays, packets of cigarettes, the remains of a bottle of whiskey, a glass. Teddy is sitting beside the table with a small locker where he keeps his bottles of beer. Beside the locker is an empty dog basket.
Set designs by John Lee Beatty
Programme with photos Abbey Theatre Dublin, 27 Nov 1990 − 12 Jan 1991: Directed by Joe Dowling and starring Donal McCann, Judy Gleeson and Ron Cook
Set designs by John Lee Beatty
FRANK: Yes; carried it for years; until we came back to Ireland. And that night in that pub in Ballybeg I crumpled it up and threw it away.
There was no sense of homecoming. I tried to simulate it but nothing stirred. Only a few memories, wan and neutral.
When we came downstairs to the lounge in the pub we got caught up in the remnants of a wedding party… Then suddenly a man called Donal who had scarcely spoken up to this thrust a bent finger in front of my face and challenged, ‘Straighten that, Mr Hardy.’ And the bar went still.
The first Irish tour! The great homecoming! The new beginning! It was all going to be so fantastic! And there I am, pretending to subscribe to the charade.
A Dionysian night. A Bacchanalian night. A frenzied, excessive Irish night when ritual was consciously and relentlessly debauched.
GRACE: And the strange thing was that night began so well. I remember watching him and thinking: Yes, his sense was true, he is going to be restored here – he was so easy and so relaxed and so charming.
And it began as such a happy night – yes – happy, happy, happy! The young men were happy. I was happy. And Frank – yes, yes, I know he was happy too. And then out of the blue – we were talking about gambling – Frank suddenly leaned across to one of the wedding guests, a young man called Donal, and said, ‘I can cure that finger of yours… And he caught the twisted finger between his palms and massaged it gently and then released it and the finger was straight.
TEDDY: It’s only – what? – twelve months since the whole County Donegal thing: that night in the Ballybeg pub and then hanging about waiting for the trial of those bloody Irish Apaches and nobody in the courtroom understands a word I’m saying – they had to get a interpreter to explain to the judge in English what the only proper Englishman in the place was saying! God!
You see that night in that pub in Ballybeg? You know how I spent the night? I spend the whole of that night just watching them. Mr and Mrs Frank Hardy. Side by side. Together in Ireland. Easy; relaxed; chatting; laughing… like if there was never none of the bitterness and the fighting and the wettings and the bloody van and the smell of the primus stove and the bills and the booze and the dirty halls and that hassle that we never seemed to rise above.
And someone must have carried me upstairs to bed because the next thing I know Gracie’s hammering on my chest and shouting and sobbing, ‘Get up, Teddy! Get up! Something terrible has happened! Something horrible!
FRANK: So on the last day of August we crossed from Stranraer to Larne and drove through the night to County Donegal. And there we got lodgings in a pub, a lounge bar really, outside a village called Ballybeg, not far from Donegal Town.
Knockmoyle is Brian Friel’s birthplace
GRACE: Anyhow I went home. For the first time and the last time. I got the night-crossing from Glasgow and then the bus to Omagh and walked the three miles out to Knockmoyle.
Aberarder, Aberayron, Llangranog, Llangurig, Abergorlech, Abergynolwyn, Llanderfeilog, Llanerchymedd, Aberhosan, Aberporth, Kinlochbervie, Inverbervie, Inverdruie, Invergordon, Badachroo, Kinlochewe, Ballantrae, Inverkeithing, Cawdor, Kirkconnel, Plaidy, Kirkinner
EXTRACT: The diviner was a tall man, inclined to flesh, and dressed in the same deep black as Nelly and the priest. He wore a black, greasy homburg, tilted the least fraction to the side, and carried a flat package, wrapped in newspaper, under his arm. The first impression was, What a fine man! But when he stepped directly in front of the headlights of one car there were signs of wear – faded, too active eyes, fingernails stained with nicotine, the trousers not a match for the jacket, the shoes cracking across the toecap, cheeks lined by the ready smile. He spoke with the attractive lilting accent of the west coast.
Father Curran did not heed her; he was sniffing the air. “Whiskey!” he announced. “That man reeks of whiskey!… A fake! A quack! A charlatan! Get a grip on yourself, woman! We’ll say another rosary and then I’ll leave you home. They’re wasting their time with that – pretender!”
Donal McCann line drawing of Brian Friel sitting on a chair, smoking, signed and dated ‘donal, 13.12.90’
BRIAN FRIEL: The four monologues in The Faith Healer, for example, have to be seen as stories because the Irish consciousness is more receptive to this; it is a tradition that goes back to the seanchaí – the travelling storyteller.¹
BRIAN FRIEL: (Faith Healer) was some kind of a metaphor for the art, the craft of writing, or whatever it is… you’re constantly, as I’m doing at the moment, saying something and listening to yourself saying it, and the third eye is constantly watching you…So there’s an exploration of that – I mean the element of a charlatan that there is in all creative work.²
Faith Healer and Faith Healer’s Wife
The Game
Bannermen
Triptych
Draft typescript and handwritten notes, entitled ‘Triptych’; with letter to Vincent Dowling (Abbey Theatre Director) from Friel, 1988
✭ Set designs and photograph of Friel and cast (1979) with kind permission of John Lee Beatty set designer: Longacre Theatre, New York 1979 and Abbey theatre DUBLIN 2021 and thank you to Performing Arts Legacy Project
✭ Donal McCann line drawing of Brian Friel sitting on a chair, smoking, signed and dated ‘donal, 13.12.90’ (National Library of Ireland Collection List No. 73 BRIAN FRIEL PAPERS, MS L 17) (42 x 59cm).
✭ Faith Healer, Book Jacket, courtesy of The Gallery Press
✭ Postcards of Donegal, Courtesy of Donegal County Museum
✭ Faith Healer (1979) by Brian Friel, in Brian Friel Collected Plays 2, (County Meath: Gallery Books) 2016
✭ ¹Mapping Cultural Imperialism, Stephen Dixon (1980), in Delaney, Paul (ed.) Brian Friel in Conversation. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press 2000, p.137
✭ ²In Interview with Fintan O’Toole (1982) in Murray, Christopher (ed.) Brian Friel: Essays, Diaries, Interviews : 1964-1999. London: Faber& Faber, 1999, p.111
✭ Brian Friel, The Diviner (1962) in The Gold in the Sea Stories by Brian Friel, (London: Gollancz) 1966
✭ Courtesy of the National Library of Ireland
✭ National Library of Ireland Collection List No. 73 BRIAN FRIEL PAPERS, MS 37,093 /1-9
✭ National Library of Ireland Collection List No. 73 BRIAN FRIEL PAPERS, MS 37,078 /4. Abbey Theatre Dublin, 27 Nov 1990 − 12 Jan 1991: Directed by Joe Dowling and starring Donal McCann, Judy Gleeson and Ron Cook.
✭ MS 37,078 /4 Drawings: letter from Donal McCann to Friel on hearing he has been cast in the 1991 production, accompanied by envelope with a signed drawing by McCann (15 Aug 1990)
✭ Brian Friel, The Diviner (1962) in The Gold in the Sea Stories by Brian Friel, (London: Gollancz) 1966
An Action of the County Donegal Heritage Plan
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