SOURCE: "The Road to Philadelphia," in Brian Friel, Gill and Macmillan, 1989, pp. 30-51.

In the following excerpt, O'Brien analyzes the geographical, cultural, social, psychological, and emotional expressions of distance in Philadelphia, Here I Come!

Friel's greatest hit [Philadelphia, Here I Come.'] was first produced at the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin, on 28 September 1964 and subsequently at the Helen Hayes Theater, New York, where beginning on 16 February 1966 it had a run of nine months; and the Lyric Theatre, in London's West End, where it opened on 21 September 1967. It has remained one of Friel's best-known and best-loved plays, has frequently been revived (most notably, perhaps, in an Abbey Theatre production in 1982), and represents the definitive breakthrough in his career, not only in terms of fame but also in terms of technique and theme.

The play is the first of Friel's to be set in the village of Ballybeg, though, as before...