THE KINGS OF THE KILBURN HIGH ROAD

At the Irish Arts Center, 553 W. 51st St. Call SmartTix, (212) 206-1525.

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IN “The Kings of the Kilburn High Road,” playwright Jimmy Murphy examines the pathology of exile. He looks at men in their 40s who left their homeland years ago to make a living elsewhere – and finds some who’ve adapted with cool success and others who are forever trapped in a fantasy of the land they left.

He focuses on a group of five Irishmen who went to London years ago and now are facing the fact that they are Londoners and that Ireland is “another country.”

The occasion is a wake in a social club and the gathering is contentious: A contractor is accused of not hiring Irish people; one guy is taunted with beating his wife and retorts with anti-black remarks against the wife of another man. Gradually, they confront the truth: This is our life; London is our home.

This is not much of a play; nothing is really dramatized as the men sit around and get drunk. But it’s an Irish production, and the director Jim Nolan and his cast have the proper spice and rhythm.

Noel O’Donovan is touching as the man who was present at the death; Frank O’Connor has a likable assurance as the moneyed contractor. Sean Lawlor plays a bitter man trapped in his dreams of the past, though he need not shout his every line in this small house.