Irish playwright Brian Friel has built a formidable reputation out of very slender materials. A couple of international hits and a handful of Chekhov translations have won him a mountain of trophies. He’s still best known for his 1990 turbo-weepy Dancing at Lughnasa, which featured five mad Irish birds stuck in the bog with no hope of escape.
His breakthrough play, Philadelphia, Here I Come, written in 1964, tackled the same themes of frustration and longing but in a brighter, lighter tone. Our hero is Gar and we meet him during his last night in Ballybeg (a cobbling-together of the Irish words for ‘small’ and ‘town’), just before he heads off for a new life in the city of brotherly love.
Gar works in a dull and horribly insular shop run by his dull and horribly insular Dad. Mum is dead and a sardonic drudge keeps house for the pair.
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