SOURCE: "The Public Face and the Private Self," in The New York Herald Tribune, 6 March 1966, p. 17.

In the following favorable review of Philadelphia, Here I Come! Kerr observes that the risky device of having two actors portray Gar is surprisingly successful.

Brian Friel's very moving play, Philadelphia, Here I Come, seems utterly incapable of making a mistake, which is all the more interesting because it risks so many. It takes its biggest risk right off. Young Gareth O'Donnell—not quite young any longer, but not truly feeling himself a man, either—is putting his few things together in the small town of Bally beg, Ireland, before flying off to Philadelphia, where he will work in a hotel and occupy the spare bedroom in the apartment of his Irish-American fright of an aunt. He is leaving behind him a father who hasn't said an unexpected word in 20 years, a...