A man stands on a bare stage and talks to us as if we’re acquainted. Friends even. His talk is discursive, candid, serious, but also defensive. As if he is in a confessional. In fact the stage isn’t bare, but a long-deserted chapel.

A woman talks to us bravely, intimately, shamelessly, as if we are her therapist. And might forgive her. Might take away her pain.

A man talks to us as if we might buy him a pint. Or give him a job. Or at least listen to him…

What are we doing here? Who are these people?

We came to be entertained. These people are testing us.

One of Prince Hamlet’s many problems is should he trust the words of a Ghost? In Kurosawa’s Rashomon competing narratives of a violent crime are resolved when the murder Victim himself testifies from beyond the grave. But is even he telling the truth? Why should we expect the dead to be more honest than the living?

Faith Healer presents three accounts of the relationship between Frank (Declan Conlon), Grace (Justine Mitchell) and Teddy (Nick Holder), who travel through the British Isles offering healing services to the poor and needy.

Frank is the ‘talent’ – the Healer whose ministrations only ‘sometimes work’. Teddy organises their tours, drives their Van (‘untaxed and uninsured’), and confuses the punters by playing Fred Astaire singing  ‘Just the Way You Look Tonight’. Grace is Frank’s partner – sometimes ‘wife’, sometimes ‘mistress’ when Frank wants to humiliate her – who takes the money at the door.

Like their not so distant kin, Hamlet’s Players, and the travelling entertainers in Bergman’s Seventh Seal, they live on their wits, and see the world differently from the locals they meet. But they are also emotionally dependent on each other and face different dangers. Tragedy awaits when the Van ventures back to Frank and Grace’s Ireland.