SOURCE: "Going Through Emigration," in Saturday Re-view, Vol. XLIX, No. 10, 5 March 1966, pp. 54-5.

Hewes admires Friel's "powers of observation that permit him to recreate characters with telling accuracy" and claims that Philadelphia, Here I Come! is "an honest piece of work" that "achieves great poignancy without pretension. "

One reason Brian Friel's new Irish play, Philadelphia, Here I Come!, is so likable may be that it so honestly assesses two unsatisfactory civilizations: inhibited and materially impoverished Ireland and its opposite, America. The playwright's view seems to be that Ireland's tragedy is the constant emigration of its best young people, and that the Irish emigrant's tragedy is that his achievement elsewhere is rootless and disconnected. For the play's entire action is its protagonist's sometimes humorous, sometimes sad, search for any reason to stay where his roots are.

To make this search more dramatic, Mr. Friel has employed the device of...