Set in the fictional town of Ballybeg, County Donegal, the play launched Friel onto the international stage.

Other indications that SB is secretly devastated by his son's imminent departure, include his remembrance of Gar in a sailor suit proudly declaring he need not go to school, he'll work in his father's shop – a memory of an event that may not have happened, and the scene when he pretends to read the paper, but fails to notice that it has been upside-down.

Gar's reasons for going to America (he wanted to prove to Aunt Lizzie that he was not "cold like the O'Donnells"), along with his secret love for his uncommunicative father, and their desperate final, pathetic attempts to communicate make this play quite tragic.

[2] The production, directed by Hilton Edwards, then transferred to Broadway in the United States, where it premiered on February 16, 1966 at the original Helen Hayes Theatre,[3] by the David Merrick Arts Foundation, with arrangement by Oscar Lewenstein and Michael White.

[5] In 2004, the play was performed through the Association of Regional Theatres Northern Ireland, directed by Adrian Dunbar and produced by Andrea Montgomery.

This production toured Ireland, stopping off at Donegal, Ennis, Dublin and Cork, as well as New York, Texas and California in the United States.

[4] In 2004, at its premiere at the Millennium Forum in Derry, Northern Ireland, Jane Coyle wrote in The Irish Times, that Adrian Dunbar has "shone a beam into the dark corners of the play and has crafted an intensely unsettling and emotionally charged evening."

[14] In 2007, Patrick Lonergan, Professor of Drama and Theatre Studies at National University of Ireland, wrote that the play has had "lasting significance; it was Friel's first international success, and the play's greatest significance is probably its ongoing popularity with audiences, which can be explained by Friel's skillful combination of humor with a serious treatment of the pain of a young man forced to emigrate".

In her view, the play is a "classic of Irish theatre and a well-judged choice for Cork Opera House’s post-lockdown reawakening."

She praised producer Patrick Talbot, director Geoff Gould and the cast, for "pulling off such a confident and entertaining full-scale production, a poignant and timely reminder of our need for connection and how we often struggle to articulate it".

[17][18] The adaptation was produced and directed by John Quested and stars Siobhán McKenna, Donal McCann, and Des Cave.