SOURCE: "Philadelphia, Here I Come! Arrives," in The New York Times, 17 February 1966, p. 28.

Philadelphia, Here I Come! premiered at the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin, in 1964. It opened 16 February 1966 at the Helen Hayes Theater in New York City. In the following review of the New York production, Kauffmann asserts that Friel's play "is like his hero: amiable and appealing enough but unexciting."

"This is a great country for export," a man said to me once in Galway, "and what we export is young men." That is the theme of Brian Friel's play, Philadelphia, Here I Come! which opened last night at the Helen Hayes: the familiar tale of youth setting out in the world, and in this case an Irish youth leaving a tiny village that has grown tinier.

Young Gar O'Donnell is off to Philadelphia in the morning (as still another song has it), away from his father's brown...