Sunday Business Post Review Philadelphia, Here I Come!

As mentioned in my previous post three reviews of the production Philadelphia, Here I Come! have been published today. Only two can be found on line, but I shall scan the Irish Mail on Sundays review and make it available here tomorrrow. Sara Keating's positively titled "New Raw Edges to Friel's play" can be found here...

Theatre: New raw edge to Friel’s play

11 November 2007 By Sara Keating

Philadelphia Here I Come! By Brian Friel, Nationwide tour

When it was first performed in 1964, Philadelphia Here I Come! was a radical piece of theatre. Not merely did it cut to the quick of an Irish society ravaged by mass emigration, but it put the psychological conflict engendered by an environment of economic and emotional poverty on the stage in the shape of two separate characters, Private Gar and Public Gar.Each character represents the divided mind of a man on the eve of his departure from his homeland. This sort of cultural schizophrenia became the dominant theme in the work of Irish writers for the next 20 years.
Ireland has changed profoundly since then. The Gar O’Donnells of the world have returned home to work with Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians and Chinese. Small towns have mushroomed.Communities have individualised. The church has lost its influence over the structure of people’s lives.So what could a play like Philadelphia Here I Come! possibly mean to an audience 43 years after it was written? Second Age Theatre’s solid production of Brian Friel’s play answers this question by performing Philadelphia as a period piece. Eileen Diss provides a naturalistic re-creation of the play’s small country kitchen set. Leonore McDonagh’s brown costumes err on the side of conservative 1960s fashion, while Sinead McKenna’s ochre lighting design evokes the sepia-toned sense of photographs fading and time gone by. In light of the play’s presence on the Leaving Certificate 2008 curriculum and the company’s status with school audiences, director Alan Stanford might be accused of playing it safe. But, with the play so embedded in a particular moment in Irish history, the backward glance effect was inevitable.In fact, it is to Stanford’s credit that he manages to find a raw edge to the play, largely through his performers. Marty Rea’s Private Gar, in particular, is superb as the repressed alter ego. With his manic energy, perfect mimicry and tense rangy physicality, Rea is like a tightly-wound metal coil about to be sprung. Sean Stewart, meanwhile, plays the 25-year-old Public Gar with spot-on sulky adolescence.Between them, they find a way to ensure that the play engages on an emotional as well as an historical level. But as Gar himself knows well, history is inescapable: ‘‘The longest way round is the fastest way home.”

Rating ***

Philadelphia Here I Come! continues at the Helix Theatre, Dublin (until November 16); Everyman Palace, Cork (November 20 & 22-23) and Pavilion Theatre, Dun Laoghaire, Co Dublin (November 29–December 1)

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Sunday Tribune Review Philadelphia, Here I Come!

Colin Murphy of the Sunday Tribune wrote a less than favourable review of the production, and of the play itself. Perhaps it is unwise of Second Age to draw attention to this review, but as we have published all other reviews, it seems only right that we publish this one too. In fact it could serve as an interesting starting point for debate. So here it is verbatim as published in the Sunday Tribune on 04/11/2007.

Philadelphia is well past its sell-by date
Colin Murphy


THE year is 1964. Gar is going to America, and using a suitcase last used by his parents on their honeymoon. He opens it to find a newspaper from their wedding day, dated 1937. "A medieval manuscript!" he exclaims.
Brian Friel's play, Philadelphia, Here I Come! , is now older than that "medieval mauscript" was to young Gar. Like that newspaper, its value is chiefly a historical one. It is badly dated and largely tedious. Nobody under, say, 35, who wasn't already inured to it from the Leaving Cert, could listen to Gar relishing his private nickname for his father, "Screwballs", and not wince.
Similarly with the constant refrain of "It is now 16 or 17 years since the Queen of France. . .". The play is mired by flashbacks and exposition; characters consistently tell us more than we need to know; everything is made tediously explicit. Two scenes in particular jar: the hoary old cliche of reading a letter aloud; and the visit of Gar's relatives from the US, who appear as little more than a cipher for the vulgarity of wealth.
The split of Gar Public from Gar Private, brashly experimental in its day, now seems like little more than a device to allow Friel spell everything out. Though Sean Stewart and Marty Rea present a finely tuned double-act, the incessant banter between Public and Private is now more reminiscent of something on the Ryan Tubridy show than of a split between ego and id.
Alan Stanford's production for Second Age, aimed at school audiences, is uninspired but faithful. He marshals his cast well around Eileen Diss's literal set. Though the company is uneven, with some responding to the dated dialogue by hamming their performances, Aine Ni Mhuiri, Enda Oates and Andrew Adamson are particularly good.
There are strengths to the play, but its chief strength for students is now its weakness as drama: its conflicts are so glaringly obvious as to come with exam questions inbuilt: public and private; children and parents; poverty and wealth, etc. Today's Ireland is a restless place that couldn't give a curse about the past; this play is so firmly rooted at one point in that past that it has become an anachronism. Discuss.

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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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Philadelphia, Here I Come! VIDEO SHOOT

On Saturday last, we shot some great footage, and stills as promos for the production Philadelphia, Here I Come! I have uploaded the video that is due to go out on TV3 from the 6th October. Needless to say this is a much compressed version for web, but you get the idea. A big thanks to all involved, Marty Rea, Sean Stewart, Alan Stanford, Anthony Woods, Eoghan Mac Giolla Bhríde, Leonore McDonagh, Val Sherlock, Conleth Teevan, and Michael Church from Cabinteely House. Have a look at it here and let us know what you think..Will be posting the stills from the day and some pics from rehearsals soon, so do check back!

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