Playwright Jimmy Murphy spoke to David Hennessy ahead of a special screening of Kings, the film adapted from his The Kings of Kilburn High Road play, so many years it started its journey there.
It will be a special return to Kilburn for Jimmy Murphy this week.
Jimmy Murphy’s play The Kings of Kilburn High Road has become a classic performed all over the world.
It was also adapted into the feature film Kings in 2007 with a cast that included Colm Meaney.
It is that film by the late director Tom Collins that is to screen at The Kiln many years after the play was staged there at the same venue then known as The Tricycle and on the very same street that is referred to in the play’s title.
The Kings of Kilburn High Road is the story of six Irish men who emigrated to London.
Although they only intended to stay a while, only one of them ever gets home and for him it is in a box.
The play takes place over the course of an afternoon. Five men mourn their lost friend but also their own youth and innocence.
While one of the men is now dead, the five other hopeful young friends who left Ireland all those years ago are now gone too.
We chatted to playwright Jimmy Murphy, whose other work includes Brothers of the Brush, A Picture of Paradise, the Muesli Belt and What’s Left of the Flag, who will take part in a Q and A after the screening.
Are you looking forward to coming over for the screening? “The film began its journey outside the theatre.
“It was when the director Tom Collins saw the play there and he was walking down the street and thought, ‘I’ve got to make a film out of this’.
“I’m quite excited about returning.”
I suppose I did assume the play did play on that famous venue on Kilburn High Road, The Tricycle…
“Oh yeah, it played for six weeks. It sold out, it was an enormous success.
“There was talk of a transfer into central London but nothing materialised.
“But it was a fascinating period.
“I believe it was the last play Richard Harris saw.
“Noel Pearson (producer My Left Food, The Field) had an idea to make a film and wanted him to play Jap.
“He brought Harris to see it towards the end of the run.
“That’s where it all took place for me in terms of its international reputation and meeting a much wider audience.”
That’s interesting about Richard Harris. Do you ever like to imagine him in the part that was eventually played by Donal O’Kelly?
“Yeah, I mean he would have been ideal for Jap.
“It was 2002 (the year Harris died) I think he was brought to see it.
“But it didn’t materialise obviously.
“It would have been an entirely different film if he’d have been attached to it.”
I bet the play got some poignant reactions from a Kilburn audience as they would have known the story of Irish men who went over with high hopes and never making it back to a home they longed for..
“Yeah, and that’s how I got the idea.
“When I was in my early 20s, I went over to work.
“I remember working on a site and there was a young man from Tyrone.
“To me he was an old man but looking back now, he was only 40 and he told me one day that he came over in the 60s to get money to marry his fiancée but got caught up in the drinking and never went back.
“It was a deeply moving story and it stuck with me.
“Then when I got the idea to write the play, it was sort of based on that man who wanted to go home but found himself stuck in that rut of considering himself a failure and getting caught up in the pub scene and the pub culture and turning his back on the fiancé.
“So many people have spoken to me saying their brothers never came home.
“They were family lads who just went off as young bucks and they never saw them again.
“They’re probably all in their 80s now, those survivors, but their contribution to Ireland with those ten bob notes being sent over into the national purses, they helped the economy a great deal and yet they felt they were failures, that they couldn’t return with their heads held high.
“It’s a heartbreaking story.
“When the play was on in Kilburn, you could spot the Paddies walking down the street.
“They were still there.
“But it was weird to write a play and then have it on its doorstep and be in the heartland of ‘County Kilburn’.”
You mention shame there and that is so key to the story, isn’t it? These men who left Ireland wouldn’t return home as ‘failures’ no matter what hard times they fell on..
“They talk about that in the play: That one of them saved a fortune to make sure when he goes home that he’s able to put on a big show and it’s revealed that it’s all a fake.
“I mean, that was part of the reason to write the play: To sort of say, ‘There’s nothing to be ashamed of’.
“People can see through the fakery.
“We all know when someone’s putting on a brave show, we’ve all seen them and I suppose it’s a realisation of these men are coming to the end of their working lives and going, ‘I want to go home, but I can’t go home’.
“And, ‘Where is home?’
“A lot of them would have been living in London longer than they lived in Ireland.
“On the building sites, they talked about all the pubs they drank in. And in the pubs, they talked about all the great building sites they worked on.
“Things went hand in hand, they were very proud of their work.
“You worked hard, you had to work hard but they drank hard afterwards.
“I think that’s where a lot of them fell into it.
“If you’re putting in huge hours and overtime, you need that relaxation in the bar, but one becomes the balance of the other.
“I’m sure it suited so many of them to turn a blind eye to their loved ones they left behind, and just work day to day, night to night, pint to pint.”
It is a young man’s game though, isn’t it? As you get older you don’t want to a) still be doing that physical work and b) drinking to such extremes.
“That’s it, we have two characters who are hiding the fact that they were sacked and they were sacked because they couldn’t keep up with the pace required of them.
“They’re realising now they’re in no man’s land.
“There’s no work for them on the sites. There’s nothing for them back in Ireland.
“And Ireland is about to bring in the euro so it’s a whole different Ireland than the one they left behind and they don’t know where they fit in anymore apart from the little bed that they have in Kilburn.”
The play would come to mean something to those who weren’t Irish.
“At one stage, there was an African version of Kings done in Dublin with all black actors who were saying their immigrant story in Ireland was the same.
“I found it very interesting that it became less parochial and more international, that it was a story of people leaving their home and forgetting to go home.
“With the building boom, all the ships are lifted by that rising tide but when the tide goes out- As we see every couple of years or so- Who are left are those who came over and sacrificed everything without putting down roots and foundations for the bad days.”
While some of the characters have little, it is Joe (played by Colm Meaney in the film) who has built something of a construction empire.
“It was important that I gave one of them the ladder of opportunity.
“In the film Colm Meaney plays the one who got away, because there were men who did well.
“There were men and women who saw an opportunity, not as many as we would have hoped but it was important for the truth of the film or of the story.
“There were ones who made the break at great cost and he lost his boyhood friends.
“He’s a big employer now as we see him in the film.
“He had to be hard and he tells them like it was: They wouldn’t get up off their arses to scratch it back then.
“They were too much into the drinking and partying.
“But it’s good to flag that some Irishmen did really well.”
How did the idea for the film come to you? Was it a case of Tom coming to you with the idea?
“Pretty much.
“Originally, Tom’s idea was to make it in English.
“He was very open and honest from the start.
“He said, ‘Look, I don’t have any money. I can’t give you any money but I’ll give you a percentage of the budget when it gets made’.
“And I thought if he’s going to be that honest, he’s trustworthy, and he had a track record so we shook hands.
“My agent was demanding a large amount of money.
“I said, ‘In Ireland that’s not how we operate. I would rather do it with a handshake’.
“So we did, about a year went by and I got the odd email off Tom, and then he discovered there was a funding network for Irish language film and he decided it would have a better chance of getting funded if he made it As Gaeilge.
“So he reapplied and lucky enough people like Colm Meaney had some Irish, so adding names to these projects always helps.
“That’s how it came about. I suppose it took the guts of three to five years.
“At times, I thought nothing was ever going to happen with it but he was true to his word and it was made.
“It was a very exciting time for me because it was my first foray into cinema.
“It was almost 20 odd years since a major Irish movie was made in the Irish language and it ended up getting long listed for the best foreign language Oscar.”
Irish language cinema has come on leaps and bounds since..
“There was a tremendous growth in the Gaelscoileanna, the primary Irish speaking schools for the children.
“That really took off in the mid 80s and by the 90s, we had lots of young boys and girls who are 15, 16, up to 20, who had come out of school speaking English and Irish with no trouble at all whereas for my generation, it was a chore.
“It was hard to get us to learn it and to speak it.
“You had a new generation who came out and they were cool with being Irish and had their own language.
“And then as the 90s went on, that generation became the 20 somethings and 30 somethings so it was like an iceberg slowly moving towards a stage where you had maybe a couple of hundred thousand boys and girls from the primary school movement who are now fluent in Irish and had no shame about speaking Irish and were an audience sitting there waiting.
“Kings sort of opened that door and what followed was extraordinary, and still is.
“The stories are there now, the talent is there now.
“I think all goes down to funding and I think the film board, who are not too shy about hopping on bandwagons, will see the worth in Irish language cinema now.
“It’s time.
“Look at someone like Kneecap even rapping in Irish.
“The whole thing has moved leaps and bounds certainly since Kings opened as a stage play in 2002 in London, to think where we are 20 years later is extraordinary turnaround for the language.”
Kneecap are also featured in this season of Irish language films as well as Poitín which is from 1978 so there are three distinct eras of films to show the progression..
“It’s brilliant.
“I remember being aware of Poitín and seeing it in the 80s and just being blown away by the simplicity of it, with some stalwarts of Irish theatre- Donal McCann, Cyril Cusick- just being Irish men.
“It was a simple story about making poitín.
“Then we come along with Kings and it’s another dimension and looks at the migration.
“Then we have this whole thing with Kneecap: The six counties Irish identity, that the language is strong there. That there’s children who, just like in the south, were brought up in the Gaelscoileanna and then when they become young adults and become creative, they inform and enforce a new level of thinking with the Irish language.
“It’s a lovely cornerstone to that triangle of Irish film, it really speaks to a time and place that we’re coming to the end of, but God knows who Kneecap will influence in years to come, who will follow in their footsteps.
“It’s gonna be an extraordinary creative time.”
Tom Collins, who directed the film Kings, passed away in July 2022.
“Me and Tom had always kept in touch.
“I remember getting the email off him a few years ago, to tell me that he was sick.
“It’s a cliche, but Tom was a giant of a man in terms of his warmth, his ambitions, his intellect and how poorer we all are with the likes of him gone.
“He had so much to bring in terms of cinema and storytelling, such a sore loss.
“He got to leave behind an extraordinary rich legacy.
“Tom is there with directors like Jim Sheridan.
“Tom has left a legacy that other directors will find it hard to achieve and that’s nothing negative or criticism critical of them, it’s just Tom punched well above his weight.
“His legacy is extraordinary and we are all the richer for it.
“I would hope that it brought him some solace that his body of work was beautiful and strong enough that he’d live on forever.”
We spoke about the reactions in Kilburn, I would imagine somewhere else it got a vivid response was in the states..
“An extraordinary reaction.
“Bob Dylan came to see it one night and sat at the back of the theatre, Woody Harrelson.
“It was weird because it became a play that people spoke about and the word rippled on beyond the Irish community it essentially plays to.
“That’s what you want me with a play, you want it to be parochial in one way, that its audience are the locals but you always want it to be international.
“It happened to Kings, that people see it now as a drama rather than an Irish play.
“There are some plays that we can see, like say Glengarry Glen Ross. It’s a great play.
“It’s not just a Chicago play, or an American play.
“And Kings and a few other plays managed to make that stride, become plays on their own terms and not just in that pigeonhole of an Irish play about migrants.
“It’s weird that it’s a 24, 25 year old play, it was a different me who wrote it.
“It’s astonishing that it’s survived this long and for it to culminate in a Q & A in the Kiln again, in The Tricycle is extraordinary.”
Kings screens at Kiln at 8pm on Tuesday 6 August, followed by a Q and A with Jimmy Murphy.
The screening is part of a series of three screenings in partnership with the Irish Cultural Centre in Hammersmith to celebrate the Irish language. It will be a followed by a preview screening of Kneecap on Tuesday 13 August.
For more information or tickets, click here.
