[1][2][3] Its New York City premiere came at the off-off-Broadway Hudson Guild Theatre in 1978, and this production transferred to Broadway shortly after the completion of its run.
The original cast included Barnard Hughes as Da, Brian Murray as Charlie Now, Lois De Banzie as Mrs. Prynne, Mia Dillon as Mary Tate, Sylvia O'Brien as Mother, Lester Rawlins as Drumm, Richard Seer as Young Charlie, and Ralph Williams as Oliver.
Its protagonist, an expatriate writer named Charlie Tynan, represents Leonard, who, like the character, was adopted.
Charlie, a writer who has been living in London for many years, returns to his boyhood home in Dalkey, a suburb of Dublin, Ireland, after the death of his adoptive father.
Charlie talks and interacts with all the ghosts, relives important moments from his youth, and comes to grips with his complicated feelings for his adoptive parents.
His Da, a gardener for a rich Anglo-Irish family, was kind and patient, but also woefully unsophisticated and lacking in ambition.
The genial, undemanding Da was the polar opposite of Charlie's other father figure, Drumm, a high-level civil servant.
He saw Charlie as the son he never had, and offered him the unsentimental advice to regard his Da as his enemy, someone who'd hold him back from succeeding in life.
They gave him a tiny pension and, as a parting gift, a tacky paperweight made from dozens of discarded eyeglasses.
Charlie visited Da regularly, giving him a few pounds for spending money, and begging the old man to come live with him in England.
In addition, he slightly rewrote the main character, Charlie, as an Irishman who had emigrated to the United States many years earlier, to permit casting of actor Martin Sheen in the role without his being forced to attempt a British or Irish accent.