LOCAL THEATRE company Heart’n'Crown arrive shortly in the Town Hall Theatre with its touring production of Jimmy Murphy’s acclaimed play The Kings of the Kilburn High Road.*

*The play 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 alcohol flows, 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 (Fair City’s Seamus Feerick), who started 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 (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 (The Bill’s Mike Kinsella) was their leader and is in the
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 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, disappointed with life, regretting opportunities
foregone, and what might have been. 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 production is directed by Robbie Gallagher and runs at the Town Hall
from Tuesday June 24 to Thursday 26. For more information and tickets
contact 091 - 569777.