Philadelphia, Here I Come! by Brian Friel

First published: 1965

First produced: 1964, at the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin, Ireland

Type of plot: Comedy

Time of work: The 1960’s

Locale: Ballybeg, County Donegal, Ireland

Principal Characters:

• Madge, the housekeeper
• Gareth “Gar” O’Donnell, (in public), a twenty-five-year-old Irishman
• Gareth O’Donnell, (in private), his thoughts, invisible to everyone onstage
• S. B. O’Donnell, his father, a shopkeeper
• Kate Doogan, his girlfriend
• Lizzy Sweeney, and
• Con Sweeney, his Irish-American aunt and uncle
• Ned,
• Tom, and
• Joe, his friends

The Play

Philadelphia, Here I Come! begins the evening before Gar O’Donnell is to leave home for Philadelphia. He has finished his last day of work in his father’s dry-goods store. He jokes with Madge, the housekeeper, as she prepares his tea, and then he begins to fantasize about life in the United States.

This fantasy, like all of his private thoughts, appears to the audience in the character of Private Gar, unheard by the other characters and unseen by anyone. Gar’s first fantasy is wild and exuberant, with images of flying in a plane and playing football. Madge enters, and they briefly discuss his father, who has apparently expressed no thoughts or feelings about his son’s departure. While Gar expresses disdain for old S. B. (Private Gar calls him Screwballs), he is clearly pained by the estrangement.

At this moment S. B. enters with a question about a delivery to the shop, and his immediate departure sets off a long fantasy scene between Public and Private Gar. Gar imagines his first day at work in a Philadelphia hotel, then, accompanied by a recording of Felix Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto, thinks of his long-dead mother. He breaks the melancholy mood with some Irish music, but it, too, holds associations, recalling his proposal of marriage to Katie Doogan.

That memory scene appears in its entirety. Kate resists Gar’s insistent proposal because he does not make enough money for them to live on. Finally he confesses his secret income from selling eggs. Though the profits are smaller than Kate first imagines, she yields and takes Gar immediately to talk to her father, Senator Doogan.

At the Doogan house Gar can only stutter in front of the self-important senator, who promptly reveals his intentions for Kate to marry someone else. Gar leaves in disgrace, and the next memory is of the newspaper announcement of Kate’s wedding. In another attempt to break the mood, Gar imagines a farcical scene with his father, followed by a fantasy of picking up a woman in the United States.

Once again Madge breaks in on the fantasy, calling him in to his meal. She reveals, in passing, that her niece has had a baby girl and has promised to name it for her. As S. B. joins Gar for tea, Private mocks him mercilessly, providing accurate predictions of everything he will say. The pain beneath the mockery emerges as Private reveals, “Screwballs, we’ve eaten together like this for the past twenty-odd years, and never once in all that time have you made as much as one unpredictable remark.” He pleads (in his thoughts) for that unpredictable remark, that one thing that might tempt him to stay. His thoughts are interrupted by the entrance of Master Boyle, the drunken schoolteacher, who has come to say good-bye to Gar and, incidentally, to borrow ten shillings.

The first scene of act 2 begins with more fantasy role-playing. Public and Private act out a scene with Gar as a United States senator. As Gar checks his immigration papers he is thrown back in memory again, this time to the day his uncle and aunt, Con and Lizzy Sweeney, came to visit and offer him the job in Philadelphia. Lizzy dominates the scene, energetic, garrulous, and a bit drunk. Gar wants to hear stories about the mother he never knew, but Lizzy is too easily distracted. She returns repeatedly to the advantages of the United States, with an emphasis on her possessions. At the end of the visit, she admits her plot to bribe her only nephew into her childless home. Undeterred by her selfish motive, Gar agrees to move to Philadelphia.

Scene 2 returns to the present and to a brief criticism of Lizzy’s vulgarity and possessiveness. To end the musing, Gar decides to go out to find his friends. He returns almost immediately with Ned, Tom, and Joe. Ned, the leader, can talk of nothing but football and women, with support from Tom. Gar attempts to speak of his departure, but Ned changes the subject. He recounts in graphic detail one of his sexual escapades, while Private counterpoints with what really happened. Finally Ned prepares to lead the group in quest of new women, pausing to give Gar his belt as a good-bye gift.

Joe, the quietest of the group, stays behind, but Gar sends him off with the others. Private realizes that “they’re louts, ignorant bloody louts,” though he wants to remember that there were good times too. This musing is interrupted by Kate, who has also come to say good-bye. The moment is awkward, and Gar manages to insult her before she leaves. The scene ends with a rush of memory, with disconnected sentences and phrases from the past.

Act 3 begins a short time later. Gar, S. B., and Madge have gathered to say their evening rosary. Gar’s imagination, revealed by Private, is again active. He recalls a spring afternoon with his father, fishing from a blue boat on a lake. Prayers over, he tries to ask his father about that day, but he is interrupted by the arrival of Canon Mick O’Byrne.

The canon is a regular visitor, here for his nightly game of checkers. Gar sees the scene as another indication of indifference to his departure. As before, Private mocks mercilessly, then lapses into melancholy. Gar goes to his room to play Mendelssohn, hearing in the music the story of fishing from the blue boat. He regrets that the two participants in that event are unable to talk to each other.

Act 3, scene 2, takes place in the middle of the night. Neither Gar nor S. B. can sleep, and they meet in the kitchen. Wanting to talk, Gar is only able to remind his father of household and business details that need attention. Finally, S. B. awkwardly advises Gar to sit at the back of the airplane, where it is safest. With this opening, Gar asks about the blue boat, only to find that his father cannot remember it. Disappointed, he leaves the room.

Madge returns from a visit to her niece and the new baby, who will be called Brigid, not Madge. To her S. B. is able to say things he could not say to Gar, and in his one long speech of the play he recounts his memory of walking hand in hand with Gar on his first day of school. When he leaves, Madge recalls a memory of her own: When S. B. was Gar’s age “he was the very same as him: leppin, and eejitin’ about and actin’ the clown; as like as two peas.” Gar comes in to say good-night to Madge and to utter one more time his doubts about leaving home.

Dramatic Devices

The most significant dramatic device in Philadelphia, Here I Come! is the use of two actors to play the role of Gar. The convention of a character revealing private thoughts through soliloquies or asides is traditional. On the other hand, Brian Friel’s splitting of a character into a public and a private self is highly innovative. Friel explains in his note on staging that “Private Gar, the spirit, is invisible to everybody, always. Nobody except Public Gar hears him talk. But even Public Gar, although he talks to Private Gar occasionally, never sees him and never looks at him. One cannot look at one’s alter ego.”

The device not only allows Gar to make private observations about the actions of the other characters but also provides opportunity for extensive revelation of Gar’s fantasy life. Gar talks to himself, acts out imaginary scenes, and reenacts scenes from his memory. Without the alter ego, these scenes would be available only through asides and soliloquies or through speeches of exposition (which would be uncharacteristic of characters who barely speak in one another’s presence).

The closest parallel is Arthur Miller’s use of acted memory scenes in Death of a Salesman (pr., pb. 1949). As in Philadelphia, Here I Come! these memories help to reveal the motives for Willy Loman’s present actions. Even more significantly, in Miller’s play the character of Ben, Willy’s brother, functions as a kind of self-manufactured conscience, goading Willy to action. Ben remains, however, a shadowy figure, an undeveloped alter ego. Friel, in contrast, moved the private self to the center of the play, exploiting all of its possibilities.

One additional technique in the play which deserves brief attention is the masterfully appropriate use of music. On two occasions Gar plays a recording of Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto, a particularly emotional and melancholy composition. In each case the music moves Gar into nearly maudlin reminiscences; with great effectiveness the music works on the audience as well. Playgoers hear it with him and, feeling the effect, understand his reaction.

Critical Context

The critical context of Philadelphia, Here I Come! is suggested by the two thematic interpretations of the play. It is at once part of a long tradition of coming-of-age plays and of the experimental movement of the 1960’s.

As a play about growing up, Brian Friel’s treatment of the theme risks criticism for sentimentality. The subject of leaving home is emotional enough, and the melancholy music of Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto only underscores this sentimental thrust. In the closing moments, when Gar and S. B. privately reveal the significant memories they cannot share with each other, the mood is especially moving. However, Friel rises above sentimentality by his masterful exploitation of comedy. Private’s satiric commentary on the action, as well as some moments of pure slapstick, helps to keep the play from becoming maudlin.

So, too, does the experimental technique. The clearly nonrealistic method of presenting one character with two actors helps to dispel the sentimentality invited by the surface of the story. In fact, it is the familiarity of the story that allows the experimental technique to work. Though the 1960’s saw significant experimentation in dramatic presentations, the mainstream, popular plays remained fairly traditional. Friel’s experiment was an exception. In fact, it enjoyed a long run on Broadway in 1966. It has been characterized by Christopher Fitz-Simon as one of the most important plays of the 1960’s. The tension between the familiar, sentimental plot and the highly experimental technique emerged as the decisive factor in creating the play’s commercial and critical success.

Sources for Further Study

Coaklay, James. “Chekhov in Ireland: Brief Notes on Friel’s Philadelphia.” Comparative Drama 7 (1973): 191-197.

Friel, Brian. Brian Friel: Essays, Diaries, Interviews. 1964-1998. London: Faber & Faber, 2000.

Hogan, Robert. After the Irish Renaissance: A Critical History of Irish Drama Since “The Plough and the Stars.” Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1967.

Kerwin, William, ed. Brian Friel: A Casebook. New York: Garland, 1997.

Leary, Daniel. “The Romanticism of Brian Friel.” In Contemporary Irish Writing, edited by James D. Brophy and Raymond J. Porter. Boston: Twayne, 1983.

Maxwell, D. E. S. Brian Friel. Lewisburg, Pa.: Bucknell University Press, 1973.

Peacock, Alan J. The Achievement of Brian Friel. Lanham, Md.: Oxford University Press, 1997.