The week in theatre: Religion Healer; Directions for a Teenage Armageddon – evaluate | Theatre

How we get by on this planet is an act of religion – we take the phrases of others on belief. Brian Friel’s masterpiece, Religion Healer, was first carried out in 1979, throughout a violent interval in Northern Eire, and is partly a examine of what occurs when one individual’s narrative undermines one other’s and the reality slides out of view. Who to consider? And what anyway can religion accomplish? There may be even the grim risk that dwelling itself would possibly show, in some methods, to be a confidence trick. It’s fantastic, in Rachel O’Riordan’s attentive, degree and serious-minded manufacturing, to be reminded of the sheer nerve and brilliance of Friel’s monologues from three actors who’re by no means collectively on stage (in contrast to the speedy from side to side of a lot modern drama), and to expertise, by means of their various variations of the reality, a distorted deja vu.

Does Frank Hardy, touring distant corners of Wales and Scotland performing miracle cures, have a present or is he a fraud? It’s a query he asks himself. Declan Conlon performs him convincingly (and sure, the phrase has weight in context) carrying a shabby black swimsuit, a stab at respectability that isn’t fairly respectable sufficient. And Conlon, you’ll be able to see, respects his character, appears to want to give him the good thing about the doubt, to be his defender. He doesn’t convey the charisma (the “particular magnificence”) nor the cruelty that Grace, his spouse, describes – however then, how far are we to belief her account of him?

As Grace, Justine Mitchell is phenomenal. She inhabits the half so fully that it’s onerous to think about she might play – be – anybody else. You see immediately that Grace is in bother. She sits hunched like a grown-up schoolgirl, with workaday footwear and untidy hair and a bottle of whiskey for firm. She has a manner of nodding in settlement with herself that appears to come up out of ache, and he or she tells us concerning the burying of her stillborn child in a area in northern Scotland (Frank will later comment, in an informal apart, that she is “barren”). Like him, she movingly makes use of an inventory of the names of the villages through which he has carried out like a prayer, an incantation – Friel’s contact of the poet.

Nick Holder is a terrific comedian flip as Teddy, Frank’s cockney supervisor. He’s a colorless, drunk, Humpty Dumpty of a person in a slovenly waistcoat, however by no means greater than a stomach snicker away from pathos. “Unbelievable” is his favorite phrase and he wags his finger repeatedly or holds up each fingers as if to calm us or discourage us from remonstrating with him. Colin Richmond’s considerate design is sparing: a light banner promoting the religion healer’s present; chairs as if in a church corridor; an unnamed house – extra frame of mind than exact location. But all roads on this unmissable play result in the fictional Donegal city of Ballybeg and the religion healer’s homecoming, his closing handle.

You would possibly assume that spending greater than an hour in a bed room with an sad teenager wouldn’t ship a lot leisure. Particularly after a primary look on the bed room itself, which is painted an alien mauve: a depleted room and not using a view, designed by Jasmine Swan. However Rosie Day’s Directions for a Teenage Armageddon, initially a novel and first carried out by Day at Southwark Playhouse in 2022, is reminiscent in tone to Jacqueline Wilson’s work for youngsters and is chirpily clever in its therapy of the unhappiness of a traumatised 15-year-old.

What makes the present particular is that the woman, Eileen, holds the ground all through (it has been theatrical monologue week). She is performed by a likably forthright Charithra Chandran (of Bridgerton fame), and though her confidence sits oddly along with her character’s presumed vulnerability, this might be defended as a traditional teenage stance. Her hair is pulled tightly right into a ponytail; she wears scarlet patent leather-based DMs, a striped shirt and blue denims. She has lately misplaced her sister Olive to anorexia. Olive is claimed to have died consuming yorkshire pudding – a element that introduces a barely strained comedy, a false observe, though you’ll be able to see what Day is doing and why.

There may be extra on this vein: a energetic morbidity, edgy teenage gags, smart-ass defences. Buoyantly directed by Georgie Staight, the manufacturing folds in exchanges with Eileen’s dad and mom and a buddy (Shelley Conn, Philip Glenister, Isabella Pappas), however these well-acted scenes are interactions on video – a distancing gadget that deepens the sense of teenage isolation. There are additionally audio clips from a scout chief, performed by Maxine Peake with a pitch-perfect condescension that remembers Joyce Grenfell’s traditional comedian sketch Nursery Faculty: George, Don’t Do That.

The comedian garnishes would possibly at occasions be surplus to necessities, however the liveliness ensures the present is rarely miserable. And Day has loads of emotional perception, highlighting the way in which anorexia impacts not solely the sufferer however the whole household. Her play is written in such a manner that Eileen’s grief for her sister exhibits solely progressively by means of her defences. And she or he is nice on how a few of the woman’s “pals” feast on her unhappiness whereas privately basking in their very own superior luck. Chandran is at her bravest in a wonderfully written scene through which the woman loses her virginity to a person encountered on-line. She disturbingly catches the collision between innocence and expertise that may be a characteristic of rising up. Eileen complains that “telling folks you’re OK even when you’re not” is what being an grownup appears to be about. “High quality”, it seems, is an empty phrase.

Star rankings (out of 5)
Religion Healer ★★★★
Directions for a Teenage Armageddon ★★★