..
.home | art & architecture | books & cds | dance | destinations | film | opera | television | theater | archives

The Kings of the Kilburn High Road
Jimmy Murphy

    The Kings of the Kilburn High Road is a long evening's journey into sentimental angst. Five expatriate Irish friends 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 (Frank O'Sullivan), who started up his own business. The others still struggle in futureless jobs at the margins of solvency. For the most part, they have romanticized their memories of Ireland with wishful fantasy. Only Shay Mulligan (Joseph M. Kelly in a fine performance) sustains both a clear recollection of the past they fled ("A pigsty, that's what I left behind me.") and the bleak present in which they are trapped.
    Jap Kavanagh (Seán Lawlor) 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 (Eamonn Hunt) 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 realization 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.
    Playwright Jimmy Murphy, while having a good ear for dialogue, is treading familiar territory here and doesn't succeed is plumbing the depths of these men. The outlines of their predictable histories are there and their strong feelings are expressed, but there is nothing fresh in either the viewpoint or the situation portrayed. In failing to reach the emotional core of the characters, the plays fall short of tragedy and treads dangerously close to melodramatic soap, alleviated primarily by the skillful performances of a first class ensemble.    

    Dublin, August 10, 2000                                                                 - Arthur Lazere