Long lyrical speeches and soliloquies aren’t exactly the bread-and-butter of present-day scripts in our debased age of Big Brother, Minute to Win It, and videogame movies. So it’s rare to come across two non-Shakespearean dramas parading into Duke Energy Theatre on successive weekends sporting high saturations of monologues and poetry. Jo Clifford’s Ines de Castro, presented by Shakespeare Carolina (of course!), started the retro procession, followed by the Starving Artist production of Brian Friel’s Faith Healer, now in its second week at Spirit Square.

For all the two dramas share in their charming attachment to such yesterday attributes as eloquence and paragraphs, the dissimilarities are just as stark. Characters address one another conversationally during the unfolding tragedy of Ines de Castro, and we always have a sense of where the action is headed. In Faith Healer, none of the characters address one another – in fact, there is never an instance when two of the three characters we meet are onstage at the same time. Not only are we unsure about how Frank Hardy’s picaresque adventures will end as the Irish faith healer narrates his story, a heavy mist of uncertainty continues to hang over what has happened after we conclude.

We cannot even be sure that Frank and his wife Grace were actually alive when they gave us their testimonies.

Daniel Fleming’s set design is so spot-on that it is difficult to imagine Faith Healer staged any other way, and Starving Artist founder Nathan Rouse, in the title role, has surrounded himself with superb castmates, Christina Whitehouse-Suggs as Grace and James K. Flynn as Frank’s manager, Teddy. In her directorial debut, Jenny Wade has these fine performers interacting flawlessly with the sparse stage environment and with us. She only neglected one key checkpoint – and this is no small thing – and that was sitting further back in the house than the third row to make sure all the performers could be heard and understood. Our party of three in the third row experienced significant difficulties before last Saturday’s intermission.

Volume isn’t the only issue when we’re dealing with Americans’ attempts to sound authentically Irish. At times, it may have helped Rouse in the opening section, and Whitehouse-Suggs in his wake, to simply slow down.

Whatever the problem had been, I finally felt relaxed when Flynn took the stage after the break. Hardy’s wanderings, adventures, and infidelities touch upon a wide range of themes: faith, friendship, intimacy, loyalty, self-involvement, and infidelity. When Frank or Grace is before us, these issues take on a somewhat lofty and spiritual flavor. Addressing us between swigs of beer – straight from the bottle, mind you – Teddy’s is an earthier presence. He can’t help equating Frank’s gift of healing and artistry with other acts he has managed, most notably a whippet who played the bagpipes, inadvertently layering Frank’s odyssey with a seedy, justly-deserved carnival coating.

Together with his fine turn as the leading man in The Lion in Winter, it’s safe to say that Flynn is re-emerging on the local scene after years of relative inactivity. His performance here, after Frank and Grace have had their say, crystallizes another key element of Friel’s script. For Teddy’s account of events differs wildly, sometimes hilariously, with those of the Hardys, reminding us of the Rashomon elusiveness of the truth. What Frank is – brave crusader, sensitive artist, or pure cad – remains as much of an enigma as what happens to him. I found myself holding my breath when Rouse returned for the fourth and final monologue, but fortunately he was far more compelling and intelligible as he took us to his ultimate moment of truth.

For all its weakness and tedium, Shakespeare Carolina’s recent Ines bodes well for their upcoming production of The Tempest, slated to open at Winthrop University in August. The eight players in Clifford’s 14th Century costume drama all seemed eminently equipped to handle minor Shakespearean roles, although most of them appeared overmatched at the Duke. Katie Bearden and Joe Mertes were both conspicuously green and royalty-challenged as the ill-fated Ines and her Prince Pedro, yet I can almost see the youthful glow they could bring to Miranda and Ferdinand on the Bard’s magical island.

Likewise, S. Wilson Lee brought us a nuanced account of King Alfonso’s paternal love for Pedro and his deeper gutlessness – but without the gloss of royal dignity. Brian Willard, after a bumpy Macbeth last summer, settled nicely into the scheming-conniver role of Pacheco; and Evelyn Foley, among multiple roles, delivered the most memorable monologue of all as the old woman personifying Death.

Without the acting artillery to quite levitate this lyrical script, Chris O’Neill directed quite well at the Duke; and wife Jill O’Neill’s sound design, which she performed live with Joe Miller, was very effective. Lighting, set, and costume designs were also ready for primetime and the company’s long-anticipated move to Winthrop.