Faith Healer

For my money Faith Healer is Brian Friel's finest play. Even so, I was taken aback by just how good this well nigh perfect production by Dublin's Gate Theatre reveals it to be.

Take the scale of it, for instance. This is a play of three monologues. The characters, Frank the faith healer himself, his wife Grace and his manager Teddy. Each is alone on the stage so there is no interaction between them. The storytelling is so good that you are always held and gripped by these lonely, lost people and intimately caught up in the gradual revelations that emerge from their stories. And I would have said that this is a play to be seen in small, intimate spaces.

Yet here, in the vast space of the King's Theatre the intimacy seems increased, as does the scale of the play. By the shattering end it has a truly epic feel to it. It's all a matter of subtle acting, nuanced movements, perfect timing and revelations signaled by a word or a look that often take the breath away.

The acting is faultless. Owen Roe is an avuncular Frank, a man who cannot face truths, particularly not those close to home, who never really believes in the genuine miracles that he sometimes performs and who only once achieves greatness, when he faces the inevitable head on. I've never seen the final moment delivered with such stature.

Ingrid Craigie wholly inhabits lonely, empty Grace, trying to put a brave face on life even as she faces the appalling losses that life has brought her. As for Kim Durham, we could have listened to and laughed at Teddy's memories – of bagpipe-playing whippets or glamorous ladies talking to pigeons – all night. But his is also in many ways the loneliest of the three lives and those memories aren't quite enough to hide the might-have-beens of his life, nor the awful things he's seen.

Robin Lefėvre's unobtrusive direction ensures that movements and actions never make this a static production but are never obtrusive either. Liz Ashcroft's sublimely dowdy settings are pitched exactly right.

Yes, three people talking directly to the audience can make for truly great theatre. Just go and see this outstanding production to experience the sheer size and scale of devastating emotions in small, seemingly unimportant lives.