The Irish may have a gift for gab, and for colorful storytelling loaded with half-truths and wordy digressions, but they retain a reticence for communicating when the subject hits too close to home. That’s the underlying message of Brian Friel’s Philadelphia, Here I Come!, which is getting a solid and thoughtful new revival at Off Broadway’s Irish Repertory Theatre. The 1964 drama put Friel on the map, and it’s easy to see the appeal of this domestic drama set in a small Irish community in 1962 where everybody knows each other and therefore things are often left unsaid, even when it’s too late.

We meet Gareth O’Donnell, the 25-year-old son of the local shopkeeper (Ciarán O’Reilly), on the eve of his departure for a new life in America with his aunt (Deirdre Madigan), the elder sister of his mother, who died just months after giving birth to him. Actually, we meet two versions of Gar: The public-facing Gar (David McElwee) is a meek fellow whose timidity and vulnerability are palpably apparent across his face, as well as the private Gar (A.J. Shively), a lively inner child who alternates between Walter Mittyish provocateur and overly sensitive protector. Shively, in one of the finest performances of the year, plays this leprechan of a character with an irrepressible physicality and lively wit that accentuates the contrast with the “real” Gar, a preternaturally reserved man who only occasionally gives in to his baser impulses (and then often regrets it).

The immediate cause of Gar’s anxiety is his father and the fact that the elder O’Donnell has yet to express anything about his son’s imminent flight across the Atlantic. Gar has questions about his family history he longs to ask, in addition to his naked desire for any outward show of paternal affection. The child is father to the man, it seems, because we also learn that Gar was similarly tongue-tied when he had the opportunity to secure the blessing of the father of his teenage sweetheart (Clare O’Malley) — who wound up marrying another man instead. O’Reilly, who also directs the production with a steady hand on the ebbs and flows of its scenes, brings a stoic poignancy to O’Donnell Senior. He strikes a pose of resignation that is betrayed by the smallest of touches, like the fact that the newspaper he reads habitually at teatime is actually upside down.

The family’s live-in servant, Madge (Terry Donnelly, in a wonderfully underplayed performance), alone seems to recognize the undercurrents of the two men whose lives she knows all too well — but even she is unable to nudge the two together to articulate the feelings that they both yearn to express. And therein lies the irony — because this is a show full of natural storytellers who spin their own, often puffed-up versions of their experiences that’s not unlike the more imaginative world that Shively’s inner Gar conjures up. Who wouldn’t want to live in that world? Friel’s Philadelpia dangles the enticing prospect of living out our most cherished, within-reach fantasy — and then slaps us across the face with the reality of our own self-doubt.