Irish Times Review by Peter Crawley

Peter Crawley reviewed the Show for the Irish Times on Tuesday night and it's clear he enjoyed the show read the full review here....

Philadelphia, Here I Come! The Helix, Dublin
It would be a bold experiment, and not one that an audience might voluntarily pay to witness, to have Brian Friel's Philadelphia, Here I Come! performed without one essential character - Gar Private. This might strike you as complete folly, like staging Hamlet without the prince. Or, given that the onstage embodiment of an internal voice was such a bold experiment to begin with, a reactionary response coming several decades too late.
But, in his frenetic routine of commentaries, interjections, vibrant fantasies, comic accents and acerbic piss-takes, Gar Private is a rebel against silence. In fact, he fills that silence of his suffocating home in Ballybeg to such a degree that in Second Age's crisp, clear production of Friel's first play, it's easy to overlook the ache of silence that might split a young man in two, to feel those excruciating stretches.
Not that you would want Marty Rea, an actor of bracing versatility and striking focus, to take the night off. Dressed as neatly as a job applicant, his Gar Private is otherworldly, certainly, but no rampaging id. In fact, as Sean Stewart's Gar Public literally makes a song and dance about fleeing for America in the morning, it's his alter ego who comes across as the restraining influence. "You know what you're doing," warns Private, essentially summarising the play. "Collecting memories and images and impressions that are going to make you bloody miserable." Director Alan Stanford works this double act smoothly, although Private, who can sometimes seem to be more in charge of the play than his author, will always run off with the show. His sardonic, caustic wit - the humour of an imagination frustrated by routine - is one that may resonate with the company's intended school audiences.
There is, from the design to the performance, a great clarity in this production - even in the well-enunciated lines of Áine Ní Mhuirí's quietly tragic housekeeper Madge that might have worked better muttered - but not much that surprises. That may be the consequence of the play's strange journey from a radical to canonical work; less the fault of a faithful production than of the sanction of the syllabus.
There is no use pining for the formal shock of 1964, however, and watching the play today you see a revealing picture of Ireland then, from the penitential posture of the rosary to the empty promise of America with its air-conditioned cars and snowy Christmases.
There may be little embellishment in this production, but there is at least no barrier between us and the play. It still has the capacity to move, nowhere more so than in the quietly significant exchange between Walter McGonagle's tamped-down patriarch SB O'Donnell and John Olohan's absent Canon O'Byrne. Silence is the enemy, urges Private, and that's true enough; but Friel also knew that sometimes it can speak volumes.
Until Nov 16 at The Helix, then The Everyman Palace Nov 20-23, and the Pavilion Theatre, Dún Laoghaire 29 Nov 29 - Dec 1
- Peter Crawley

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Saturday Independent review - 20.10.2007

On Saturday Anitra Guidra wrote a great review of Thursday nights show ...


A second coming for signature Friel play
Anita Guidera
Saturday October 20 2007


THE challenge for cast and crew with a composition as played as this Friel masterpiece is to find its freshness anew.


In fact, two of the cast from this Second Age production played the same roles in Adrian Dunbar's version in the Gaiety. Walter McMonagle reprieves his role as taciturn father, S B O'Donnell, and a charming Marty Rea as Gar Private.

But with lightness of touch, director Alan Stanford succeeds in eliciting from a talented cast a keen sense of the repressive early 1960s in rural Ireland.

This is aided by a meticulously detailed set by award-winning designer Eileen Diss.

Here, in this Donegal backwater of Ballybeg, Gar Public, performed with sensitivity and youthful exuberance by Donegal-born rising star Sean Stewart, is on the cusp of cutting loose for Philadelphia.

Dimension

His inner turmoil, actualised by Rea's Gar Private, gives the play its dimension as he struggles with lost love and desperately seeks an eleventh-hour demonstration of love from an uncommunicative father.

Among the theatrical high points is the poignant visit and awkward embrace of Gar from old schoolteacher, Master Boyle (Enda Oates), who is drowning his love for Gar's dead mother in alcohol, and Aine Ni Mhuiri's touching performance as world weary Madge, about to lose the closest thing she has ever had to a son.

But tying it all together is humour, not just from the excellent mimicry of Gar Private and the thinly-veiled pathos of Aunt Lizzy (Joan Sheehy), but from the lads who call to say goodbye only to distract themselves from the moment with grandiose claims of their own past conquests.

Perhaps stealing the show is the hilarious John Olohan as smug Canon Mick O'Byrne, one of the few characters who's truly delighted with himself and his lot.

- Anita Guidera

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Packed Houses in Donegal

Over the last 5 days, the Second Age production of Philadelphia, has played to almost 2,000 people, and the overwhelming response is that this production is a hit..... The show opened to a predominantly school audience on Wednesday 17th October, and only 29 of the 393 seats at an Grianán were empty. The following day another Matinee with not one seat empty in the house, and that night, the first non-schools performance took place. With nearly every seat in the house taken at an Grianáns beautiful new auditorium, the atmosphere was fantastic. Every nuance and subtle play of humour was seized upon by the delightfully attentive audience and when the cast took their bow, and the Donegal audience gave them their first standing ovation.

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PHILADELPHIA Publicity Stills - Photos: Anthony Woods

Have a look at some of the great stills we got for Philadelphia, Here I Come! and let us know what you think of them....

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