Kilburn on the High Road
It was an odd feeling returning to the Old Cock in Kilburn High Road, lured thither by the second play in the new wave of climate change theatre started at the Bush with Steve Waters’ impressive double-header, The Contingency Plan, and continuing next week with When the Rain Stops Falling at the Almeida (presumably written by Steve’s brother, Muddy?).
It’s a ramshackle old Irish pub, one of many between Maida Vale and Cricklewood, but not one I’d penetrated for quite some time. “Have you been here before?” enquired the Amazonian Viking press officer — six foot tall, long blonde hair, sparkling blue eyes – of the new improvised play Impossible Storms…
Yes, I had to reply, turning into a character in a J B Priestley play. But not for well over three decades. I was living in the area at the time and a new pre-punk group, big on the pub rock circuit, were the resident wailers, imaginatively called Kilburn and the High Roads. The lead singer was a strange little crippled guy called Ian Dury.
They were sensational, but they folded soon afterwards before re-launching towards the end of the 1970s as Ian Dury and the Blockheads. I wonder what happened to them?
The Old Cock hadn’t changed much at all. The decor was still non-existent, with a sort of depressing black surround in the major areas, the raised stage where the Kilburns roared and ranted still in place in the main window giving on to the high street.
I was slighty disappointed that we had to ascend to a pokey attic room for the play — how these places ever get cleared by the Health and Safety or fire regulations I’ll never know — as I was hoping the wild and fearless spirit of the ballsy band might have invaded the actors had they trod the same jutting platform. No such luck.
A few old Micks and Paddies sat disconsolately with their Guinnesses as before. One thing I hadn’t understood all those years ago: why were so many people sniffing up what looked like Beecham’s Powders at the round little pub tables? There must have been a flu epidemic at the time.
There remains an obvious cultural dislocation between the everyday pub life and the work of an improvisatory theatre group like
Jamie Harper and Dan Muirden’s Sound Dust, but I’m told the place has lately been taken over by a chap who used to be involved with the Mean Fiddler music venues, which explains the recent spate of comedy nights at the venue, and this theatre initiative.
It’s ironic that one of the first pub venues, the Bush, seems to suffer continual set-backs in its relations with the pub proprietors, not to mention local residents. The Landor at Clapham has a much healthier relationship with its owners, as do the Pentameters in Hampstead and the Old Red Lion at the Angel.
Ideally, of course, you want the theatre producers to own the theatre, as it falls out at the King’s Head, though that situation is no guarantee of a quality programme, as is now sadly evident in Upper Street.
Theatre low life is most vibrantly served these days at places like the buzzing Arcola in Dalston, where the Swedish ambassador, no less, joined the opening night throng for the pseudo-documentary play about the murder of Jamie Bulger, Monsters.
One suspects that the distinguished emissary was drawn there by the fact that the play, written by a Swede, has won (though God only knows why) the inaugural Anglo-Swedish Foundation Award.
But we can’t be sure, especially as the opening line of the play is, “I don’t know why you came here.” Perhaps we were all now in the world of J B Priestley and had all been there before without remembering why or when.
At least in Kilburn I had my crackling memories of the Blockheads to keep me going, although these were soon hounded by the melancholy thought that I’d be dead within the same span of time as the period going back to that IRA bomb-scare era along the Number Sixteen bus route. It only seems like yesterday.