Galway based Heart N Crown Theatre Company tours the West with 'The Kings of the Kilburn High Road' this month.

The story follows five expatriate Irish friends who gather in their local London pub for a wake - a sixth member of the group has died at age 50.

As the lager and liquor flow, their shared history is told: they came together from Ireland 27 years before, seeking new opportunities in England, planning to return home as conquering successes. Only one has flourished: Joe Mullen who started up his own business. The others still struggle in futureless jobs at the margins of solvency. For the most part, they have romanticised their memories of Ireland with wishful fantasy. Only Shay Mulligan sustains both a clear recollection of the past they fled and the bleak present in which they are trapped.

Jap Kavanagh was their leader and is in greatest denial of their failures. He sustains the dream of returning home to Ireland in triumph; the truth is, his rare visit back home has involved saving up for weeks before to put on a show of affluence for the home folks. Maurteen Rodgers is a wife-beating alcoholic and the father of six, struggling to dry out, but all too easily coaxed back to the bottle by the peer pressure of his boozy buddies.

The situation of these men, self-exiled in a foreign land, away from their roots yet profoundly anti-English, is complicated not only by the failure of their emigration, but also by the realisation that, after all these years, the home they knew is not there to return to - all is changed. They are trapped, adrift between hither and yon with all the disappointment that life has delivered and all the regrets for opportunities foregone, for what might have been.

The central plot device of the play is drawn from the death they have gathered to mourn and the revelation of its circumstances, circumstances which force the survivors, at least for the moment, to focus more clearly on their own realities, peeling away the protective layers of self-deception.

Their solution is yet more alcohol and, intended or not, the play seems to suggest that their taste - or social more - for booze and partying is as much the cause of their failures as it is the escape from their dismal prospects.

The Kings tour has started already with a sell out crowd at An Glor Arts Centre but can be seen in Station House Theatre on Saturday 12 April. (Phone the booking line on 095-21699.) It will run in the Raheen Woods Hotel on Saturday 19 April, (Phone 091-875888), Halla Ronain on the Aran Islands on Saturday 3 May and will finish in the Town Hall Theatre from Tuesday 24 to Thursday June. (Phone 091-569777.)

Comments (0) »

Show/Hide comment form

Name

Email

Title

Comment

Write the displayed characters

Add Comment