Theatre in Review: Philadelphia, Here I Come! (Irish Repertory Theatre)

	Terry Donnelly, A. J. Shively, David McElwee. Photo: Jeremy Daniel

The nimblest double act in town consists of David McElwee and A.J. Shively, who collectively appear as the protagonist of Brian Friel's melancholy comedy. (Philadelphia, Here I Come! put Friel on the map, introducing playgoers to the fictional territory of Ballybeg, from which, over the course of several decades, he rarely strayed.) The actors are both cast as Gar, a young man about to flee his home for maybe forever. It is 1962 and the Irish diaspora is in full swing: An aunt and uncle await in Philadelphia, along with the offer of a job in a hotel. And what is holding him back? Gar is tired of toiling for pin money in his father's general shop. His girl has married a young doctor with real prospects. His friends are headed nowhere fast unless you count alcoholism as a destination. And yet the prospect of a clean break, without scars, is dim.

McElwee, tall, slightly hunched, with the face of a disappointed boy, is the public face of Gar; Shively, a musical theatre veteran, is Gar's inside voice, a lithe, wisecracking smart-aleck, swapping out voices and personas all by way of expressing Gary's wildly conflicted emotions. Together, they are a one-man comedy team, mercilessly tweaking every cliché of Irish culture, As Private Gar asks his alter ego, "Are you fully conscious of your decision? Of leaving the country of your birth, the land of the curlew and the snipe, the Aran sweater and the Irish Sweepstakes? Where the devil himself holds sway, and lust ... abhorrent lust is everywhere indulged in shamelessly?" The answer, for the moment, is a robust affirmative.

Public Gar longs for the mother who died giving birth to him; rails against the father who barely notices him; and is deeply touched by the housekeeper who grumblingly, but unselfishly, tends to father and son. He can be sullen, a bit of lump, resentful and frightened at the thought of life passing him by. Private Gar is a dervish, a Pulcinella, a prankster, conducting imaginary symphonies, initiating step-dance routines, and slipping into an Amurrican accent to assume the role of a Wild West cowpuncher. (Clearly, he has little notion of everyday life in the City of Brotherly Love.) Private Gar is also an early-warning signal of emotional distress, constantly pulling Public Gar back from the brink of speaking too honestly; alternatively, blowing off steam, Public Gar jumps up on the dinner table, furiously (and vainly) demanding that someone in this benighted household for once say or do something a little bit novel.

As night falls and final preparations are made for the next day's journey, Gar takes inventory of his losses, wondering why leaving the stony ground of Ballybeg causes such anguish. In Ciarán O'Reilly's supremely sensitive production, a parade of characters passes through the house, offering a precise accounting of an emotionally starved existence: Master Boyle, schoolteacher and pretentious poet manqué who might have married Gar's mother; Katie, the girl who (regretfully) got away; and cronies Tom, Ned, and Joe, their earlier days of roistering having soured into all-night booze-ups spiced with largely fictitious accounts of sexual conquests.

O'Reilly has rounded up a company of the Irish Rep's finest to populate this collection of withered souls. Terry Donnelly offers tart commentary as spinster housekeeper Madge, turning tearful at the thought of having a newborn niece for a namesake; Patrick Fitzgerald's Master Boyle is a seedy poseur not above hitting up Gar for a small loan before he leaves town; Clare O'Malley adds a touch of rue to Katie, who, asked about her husband, pauses unsettlingly before adding with cold deliberation, "I hear no complaints;" James Russell as the surliest and saddest of Gar's friends, offering an unexpectedly moving gesture of farewell; and Deirdre Mangan as Gar's American Aunt Lizzie, a whisky-soaked chatterbox who has never ended a sentence nor held a thought for more than a minute, but who aches for the son she never had. Best of all is O'Reilly as S.B., aka "Screwballs," Gar's father, who, seated at the dinner table wearing his bowler hat, takes out his upper place and sighs, "Another day over. I suppose we have nothing to complain about." (It's a moment you could interpolate into any Samuel Beckett plays and no one would be the wiser.)

O'Reilly finds any number of illuminating moments in this extended leave-taking: Katie's father (Ciaran Byrne) deftly dashing Gar's hopes by quietly informing him that she has a better offer; Madge, stunned by a crushing reversal, going about her chores insisting that nothing has happened; Gar's gang pausing their banter to concentrate on pouring another round of stout; a late night rosary session that tells all about the family's fierce piety; and S.B.'s pained admission that he was too old to raise a son ("I could have been his grandfather").

O'Reilly has also assembled a team of the Irish Rep's top designers, starting with Charlie Corcoran, whose two-level set has hidden depths revealed by Michael Gottlieb's fluid, moody lighting; specially artful is the way Gottlieb picks out Shively in any tableau, giving him an otherworldly cast. Orla Long's costumes, which feel accurate to the time and place, are marked by many telling details (S.B.'s hat, Madge's sensible sweater, Aunt Lizzie's brightly colored pants and top.) Ryan Rumery and M. Florian Staab fill the time between scenes with wistful musical passages arranged for piano and strings as well as effects such as birdsong.

Few playwrights have captured the competing urge to break out of stifling circumstances while desperately clinging to the hope that love might yet be found there, even as the hour of departure approaches. (The single image of happiness to which Gar holds fast is cruelly revealed to be, quite possibly, a trick of memory.) It only makes sense that Gar has two faces: Stay or go, conform or rebel, heartbreak will be his lot. We last see him taking in every detail of his dreary home for fear that, on his travels, something precious might be forgotten. By then, McElwee and Shively have managed an effortless transition from mockery to sorrow: Gar is free and maybe that's what he wants; even so, it's a freedom purchased at a steep price. --David Barbour