Feature: THE KILBURN HIGH ROAD FESTIVAL
Community Theatre production, full of heart and soul, launches major festival
At first, I thought it was (dare I use the phrase?) Fake News. Did a Labour Prime Minister, only the second to have won a majority in a General Election for half a century, really talk about “an island of strangers”? There were some mitigating circumstances and the apology, an unusual act for any politician, came relatively quickly, but the damage was done. His successor would never let that phrase pass his lips - a conclusion that played, and is playing, no small part in Andy Burnham’s red hot summer.
If I’m at a loss to understand how Sir Keir Starmer, human rights lawyer, ever allowed himself to say such words, All The Things We Can’t Explain presents a thoroughgoing rebuttal of the societal anomie that they imply.
Sonia Jalaly’s play, performed by a cast of 80 or so residents of Kilburn (who start off with some self-deprecating lines about Community Theatre to ease us, and no doubt them, into the show) concerns Kilburn, but it could easily be about Tooting, where I live, or Manchester or Glasgow or, even, tentatively, Belfast.
In a slightly heavy-handed metaphor, the Heart of Kilburn has been found in a 1920s cinema under threat from developers, and it’s still beating. (We have a cinema like that in Tooting with a Wurlitzer organ too, albeit no longer working). There’s a bit of mumbo-jumbo about ancient monks, but The Lord of the Rings stuff doesn’t last long and The Suits, with their clipboards and sanitising instincts, are soon sent packing by a kaleidoscope of 21st century Londoners - well, Kilburnites.
All The Things We Can't Explain is very funny, as well as pointed in its critique of finance-driven regeneration schemes. It also says a good deal about what our culture values, something that always comes to mind when I see the jewellery in the Victoria and Albert Museum. Where are the preserved artefacts that have far less monetary value but far more emotional heft? To be fair, that's understood more widely now, but class and colonialism still resonate strongly through our most prestigious museums.
It’s the kind of production one sees at Chickenshed and sometimes at The National Theatre and it will have its counterparts around the country. They never fail to lift my spirits, as their message about the power of the collective to address collective issues doesn’t just come through in the narrative as a people's museum is created, but it’s there, before your very eyes, in the fact that it’s happening at all. It’s a lesson that, as Sir Keir found out, needs to be learned repeatedly, so prevalent are the siren forces who would divide us if they could.
The play marks the launch of The Kilburn High Road Festival, the culmination of three years of workshops, events and performances, that form Celebrating our Stories: The Kilburn High Road Project. You have to admire the timing!
The project will platform and celebrate the heritages of those who live or have lived in Kilburn. Every performance and artwork has been developed through collaboration and partnerships with residents, artists and organisations. Since January 2024, nearly 300 workshops and events working with over 2,000 participants have been held to excavate (I admit) the heart of Kilburn, culminating in a fortnight of free events, community celebrations and spectacular stories.
That the Kiln Theatre, long-embedded in its community, a very clear focus on an extraordinarily mixed high street, one of London’s very best, is playing a big part in the initiative is very much to its credit. Specifically, it demonstrates that it can be done and throws down the gauntlet to other theatres to initiate something similar.
God knows that’s a huge challenge on top of plenty more the sector faces, when did anyone succeed in theatre by thinking small? And, with empowered mayors and a marked cultural shift at the very top of British politics, over the next couple years, they might just find a welcoming, rather than a hostile, environment in which to work.
The Kilburn High Road Festival continues at various venues until 15 August
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