Goin’ Up To New York- Part 1

Thursday night, I picked Munsen up and we went to the local Pro-Feed store in Fairlington to pick up some necessary items for the arrival of Leela and Fry (Yup, as soon as the cage arrives, they will be mine) and we hit Joe’s Pizza Place for some dinner and Old Navy so I could get a couple of fun summer-y shirts for my trip to Manhattan with My Gay Dads the next morning.

My dads picked me up and we left around 9-ish and made some good time on the drive up there, arriving before 2 PM. We settled into our room at the Sheraton on 51st and then figured out what we want to do before dinner and our first show of the weekend- “Faith Healer.” I went on my usual jaunt down to Union Square to hit the Virgin Megastore and Forbidden Planet stores and then walked down to Astor Place and looked at the rare videos and punk-attired people over at Kim’s Video before heading back to the hotel. It got so warm, that I was a sopping mess, so before dinner, I took a quick shower and then we headed down the few blocks to find a place to eat. Angus was crazy crowded, so we ended up at Pigalle, which is usually our post-show dessert spot. I was craving a burger with Brie Cheese, so that’s what I got and then we headed down to the Booth Theatre.

To be honest, “Faith Healer” was not something I was really looking forward to, simply because I didn’t really want to pay crazy-Broadway-prices for a 3 person play (I know I did for “Three Days of Rain” but that had Bradley Cooper, Paul Rudd and a little-known performer named Julia Roberts) from a playwright I hadn’t seen anything from and then when I heard it was basically 4 monologues, I clearly did not want to go. Once the reviews came out and I read more descriptions, I started looking forward to it (little by little) to where I didn’t mind seeing it at all, after all, Emperor Palpatine himself- Ian McDiarmid- was also in the play.

I’m glad I went. “Faith Healer” turned out to be one of the high points of the weekend. Basically, a Rashoman-like story told from three points of view concerning the travels of the Faith Healer (Ralph Fiennes), his wife (or is it mistress?) (Cherry Jones), and his Manager (Ian McDiarmid) and an event that happened when they returned to Ireland after two decades. The fact that there is a level of suspicion over who’s telling the “truth” and what that truth may actually be is up to what you make of it. I found that aspect to be similar to “Doubt” and it’s just as effective in this as well Mr. Fiennes and Ms. Jones acquit themselves nicely, although I think that she becomes a little unintelligible when she’s emotional and Mr. Fiennes had the daunting task of opening and closing the play with exposition and providing the coda (and dealing with all the atmospheric noise of crowds shouting for Julia Roberts as she exited her nearby theatre), making me leave the theatre in a very introspective mood. Mr. McDiarmid injects some great humour into his role and provides the highlight of the evening with his reflections of traveling the Faith Healer circuit and being enamored /enraptured with his two other companions. My Grade: A