Galway based Heart N Crown Tour the West with “Kings”

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 (Seamus Feerick from “Fair City”), 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 (Joe Tighe) 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 (Mike Kinsella from “The Bill”) 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 (Aidan Archer) 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.

Seamus Feerick (Fair City) and Mike Kinsella (The Bill) during rehearsals for “Kings”.

Produced by Stephen P. Kenny and Directed by Robbie Gallagher.

The “Kings” tour has started already with a sell out crowd at the an Glor Arts Centre but can be seen now in Station House Theatre (April 12^th) booking on 095-21699, Raheen Woods Hotel (April 19^th) booking on 091-875888, Halla Ronain in Aran Islands on May 3^rd and finishing the tour is the Town Hall Theatre from June 24-26^th with booking on 091-569777. You can check more information on www.bebo.com/HeartNCrown