““Philadelphia” is both very funny and liable to take a sharp little dagger to your heart as it ponders the guts it takes to leave home for another country, and the guts it takes to forge a future where you’ve always been. At its center is an impeccable double act: David McElwee as the timid, external Gar and A.J. Shively as the garrulous, unconstrained Gar inside his head…The play’s whipsaw emotional balance is complex, delicate, subtle. This superb production delineates it all.” -Laura Collins-Hughes, NYTimes

"The two Gars are terrific and nicely contrasted. Mr. McElwee renders the public Gar with buoyancy and sensitivity, bouncing around his small bedroom, dancing with his private self in their happier moments, but maintaining a brooding front in the presence of others. His pale face often seems to be a mask he can barely keep from cracking open to let his more complicated feelings—the love for his father that cannot seem to find a path to connection—from bursting through." -WSJ, Charles Isherwood

"The stellar performances of McElwee and Shively, playing off each other, more than suffice to make this revival compulsory viewing. In the course of one pivotal evening, Outer Gar segues from boy to man, as giddy optimism evolves into an overdue reckoning. Inner Gar comes along for the ride, as an antic, relentlessly truthful prod. At least, after this “American wake” – when dreams and hopes are inevitably reassessed – the public Gar will have has inner self’s irrepressible energy and honesty to see him through. "-NY Stage Review, Sandy MacDonald

"But the key to the success of this production lies with McElwee and Shively. Sporting the right manchild-like physical features as Public Gar, McElwee proves as adept as O’Reilly in suggesting oceans of inner emotion amid a relatively stoic exterior. " -TheaterMania, Kenji Fujishima

Public Gar is as surly and awkward with his father as the old man is toward him: Despite his manic inner life, he’s clearly osmosed an external character that’s either flippant and breezy or tongue-tied, sullen, and suffocating under the weight of repression and self-doubt. - Vulture, Sara Holdren