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. But will they manage to exchange words of tenderness before it’s too late? That’s the plot. Gar has a pretend friend who shares his bedroom and his innermost thoughts. The script bills them as Private Gar and Public Gar. Two guys named Gar. With this neat and original device, Friel is able to build up a beautifully detailed snapshot of Ballybeg and its population of misfits, despots, schemers and losers. Mind you, the split-personality trick may help with the portraiture but it dilutes the focus of the drama. The final Gar-Dad confrontation is considerably impaired by the presence of Gar’s other self on stage.
Paul Reid does well as the spunky young Odysseus. Valerie Lilley turns in a subtle and amusing performance as the spiky but kind-hearted cleaner. And James Hayes, the silent father, is as motionless and obdurate as a stone circle.
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