Philadelphia, Here I Come! is Brian Friel's breakthrough success. He wrote it in 1964 after having written a few other plays, including The Enemy Within and The Blind Mice. Philadelphia's heart-wrenching and intimate portrayal of an Irishman's ambivalence and excitement about immigration to the United States brought him to the attention of Irish and American audiences alike. Its first production took place at the Gaiety Theatre in Dublin in 1964 and transferred to Broadway in 1966, at which point it was nominated for Tony Awards for Best Play and Best Director (Hilton Edwards).
The play takes place in a fictional Irish village of Ballybeg, and follows a young Irishman named Gar on the night before he leaves Ireland to move to Philadelphia. The narrative tracks his alternate excitement and dread about leaving, and shows the fallout of emigration and leaving behind one's family and culture. A notable element of the play is the fact that Gar is portrayed by two actors, one playing his Public Self and the other playing his Private Self. Friel stages the tension between interiority and exteriority and the ways that the push and pull between different parts of one's consciousness make life more complicated and filled with doubt.
The play was a huge success and has remained one of Friel's most famous works. It has been revived many times over the years, particularly in Ireland and England. In 1970 it was turned into a film starring Donal McCann and Siobhan McKenna. The original Broadway cast featured Patrick Bedford, Donal Donnelly, Mairin D. O'Sullivan, and Eamon Kelly.
