Philadelphia, Here I Come! tells the tale of one such fortune seeker, Gar O’Donnell, as he spends his last night at home in the small fictional Donegal town of Ballybeg. Friel signals Gar’s ambivalence about leaving by dividing his protagonist into two. The Public Gar shuffles back and forth between bedroom and kitchen, making preparations to go and receiving visitors come to bid him farewell. His invisible alter ego, Private Gar, hovers on the periphery, speaking out Gar’s interior monologue and triggering memories that give him pause about going. Gar might even change his mind if only his hardhearted father, keeper of the local general store, would break his stony silence and acknowledge his son in some personal way.

This strained father-son connection is the most important emotional relationship in the play, but its theatricality derives from the interplay between Public Gar and Private Gar. What does Gar’s secret self really want? And how hard will he lean on his outward persona to get it? Private Gar’s nature as a phantom opens up the possibility of emotional and behavioral extremes, but director Kyle Donnelly keeps him on a tight, realistic leash: he stands passively on the sidelines offering wry but benign commentary on the proceedings. Donnelly may have had it in mind that Noah Bean took over the role of Private Gar only a few days before the opening, and at this performance he still had script in hand to help with some of his longer monologues. The decision to mike the actor, presumably to give the alter ego a more ethereal quality, proves to be a distracting nuisance, particularly when the sound levels are off.

Austin Lysy seems miscast in the role of Public Gar, not for lack of talent but because his boyish good looks make him seem more like a lad heading off to college than a 25-year-old man going over a cliff into the New World. The most active and interesting character turns out to be Madge, housekeeper for Gar and his father since Gar’s mother died three days after giving him birth. Nancy Robinette gives Madge a frumpish, salt-of-the-earth dignity as she tries to get Gar’s father and friends to acknowledge the significance of his departure. Henry Strozier depicts Gar’s father with such a formidable stoniness that when he finally opens up a bit in the final scene, he seems almost a different character.

As an early play, Philadelphia, Here I Come! forecasts Friel’s abiding concern with memory. The play depicts the peculiar type of nostalgia that can overwhelm you before you leave home; as you turn to face the door, the present becomes memory and you hesitate. This hesitation has a static quality to it, giving the play an inertia that the Williamstown revival is unable to overcome.