Funny, poignant play of lives lost to emigration

Funny, sad and occasionally harsh, Jimmy Murphy’s hit play, The Kings of the Kilburn High Road, will be staged this Friday and Saturday night, March 5 and 5 in the Town Hall Theatre as part of a national tour.

This new production, which is receiving great reviews, is from Cavan’s Livin’ Dred Theatre, with a fine cast being directed by the company’s Artistic Director Padraic McIntyre.

The play, which was first produced in 2000 by Waterford’s Red Kettle Theatre, is the story of six young Irish men who emigrated to London in the 1970s. Like so many others, they dreamed of making a fortune and returning home. Twenty-five years on, only one of them, Jackie Flavin, has made that return journey. But he has done so in a coffin.

The play is set in a pub on the Kilburn High Road as the other five meet up to toast Jackie’s memory. As the drink flows, they discuss their lives, the dreams the once had and their place in an Ireland they no longer recognise.

“It’s funny but it’s poignant and it’s about people getting lost,” says Padraic of the play. “These boys left Ireland in the 1970s and a quarter of a century on they don’t belong anywhere.”

Padraic trained as an actor in Wales and then worked across the UK, including in London and Manchester. Like many in that profession, he worked in pubs between acting jobs.

He recalls meeting similar men, including one man who had never gone home. This man’s English-born wife and children had visited the man’s home, but the native Irishman had refused to go.

“He said it had been too painful to leave it the first time,” recalls Padraic.

In the play, the fact that one of the men has died makes the others question their mortality. To all intents and purposes, only one of them has achieved anything and as the session goes on and they the drink loosens their tongues, the group fractures.

“You are laughing one minute and your heart breaks for each and every one of them the next,” says Padraic, who has strong family ties with the West of Ireland and who will be coming to Galway to see the play here.

Padraic has assembled what he calls “my dream team” for this production – people he has always wanted to work with.

The cast is made up of Arthur Riordan, Phelim Drew, Malcolm McAdams, Charlie Bonner and Seamus O’Rourke, whose CVs are extensive and impressive, and whose performances in this production are getting strong praise.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.