REVIEWS FOR PADDY – THE LIFE AND TIMES OF PADDY ARMSTRONG
“Wycherley is superlative in this exquisitely tender portrayal of Paddy Armstrong”
– Emer O’Kelly, Sunday Independent.
“This is writing and acting at its most powerful… a totally engrossing experience. It truly is a show not to be missed”
– Michael Harnett, playwright.
“A redemption song… unputdownable”
- Irish Examiner
“If it were a work of fiction, it would be worthy of the Man Booker shortlist”
– Guardian
“Incredible… Don Wycherley in the performance of his life… Unforgettable”
– Joe Duffy.
“An absolute must-see. Incredible play that will make you laugh, cry, become enraged in equal measure. Don Wycherley is outstanding”
- audience member
“Stunning play and performance. Don’t miss it”
– Alastair Logan (Guildford Four solicitor)
“Hilarious, moving, infuriating. I was moved beyond words. I want to see it again”
- audience member
“Prepare to feel the weight of injustice, the resilience of the human spirit and the power of truth. All masterfully conveyed in this unforgettable production. Loved it!!”
- audience member
“On 5th October 1974 a bomb exploded in the Horse and Groom Pub in Guildford, Surrey which killed five people including four soldiers. On 11th December 1974, the police arrested four individuals (“the Guildford Four”) one of whom was Paddy Armstrong. In October 1975, they were convicted of the bombing and sentenced to life imprisonment. Almost fifteen years later on 19th October 1989, all four were released and their convictions were quashed as being unsafe. Tynan, Wycherley and Gleeson have created this 75-minute piece of theatre to describe the life of Paddy Armstrong in Belfast and London along with his arrest and interrogation, the trial, his years of incarceration and the ultimate quashing of the convictions. It is a solo performance by Wycherley who plays Paddy throughout.
The events described are mind-boggling as the police extracted confessions from each of the accused by unlawful means. The judiciary is also implicated by the testimony of the Balcombe Street bombers who during their trial in 1977 made known that they were responsible for the Horse and Groom Pub bombing; that the Guilford Four were innocent and therefore wrongfully imprisoned. Remarkably that evidence was not sufficient to set aside the convictions. Another twelve years would pass before the convictions were set aside as unsafe. Paddy, as a result, was incarcerated unlawfully for fifteen long years.
That is the background story. Now Paddy, in his seventies, is in a sitting room, with two armchairs, in Clontarf where he lives as he recalls the events of his life. Wycherley with impressive linguistic skills moves between Belfast accents, a variety of English regional accents and the lofty tones of the English judicial establishment as he tells the story. It is also a physically demanding performance because he is on his feet throughout as the two armchairs are but props to provide some awareness of the calmness of the life Paddy now lives. Wycherley brings a variety of colours to Paddy’s somewhat feckless youthful life in Belfast where he had employment, if you can call it that, in a bookmaker’s shop to the catastrophic events which would overwhelm him when he went to live in London in a squat. Wycherley makes all this vivid as well as the brutality and lawlessness of the police and prison officers. The English legal system failed at numerous levels. But Paddy has survived to tell his story with pride and little rancour.
This is a gripping piece of theatre. Wycherely reveals the Kafkaesque reality of it all. It is a shameful story for the English legal system but for Paddy Armstrong, it is a worthy acknowledgement of a man “failed and scarred by a flawed system yet refusing to be defined by it.” He now has a calm existence where his own routine defines his life. This is a play which shows the value of theatre in making accessible the human consequences of a miscarriage of justice. A miscarriage of justice is a serious failing in a society that claims to be civilised. Its corrosive ramifications reach far. In this instance, the miscarriage of justice took place at many different levels. It is a grim tale made into an absorbing piece of theatre. It is entirely appropriate that it is premiering in Clontarf’s own theatre “The Viking”. It is an important play and deserves to be widely seen in both Britain and Ireland.”
- Frank L. No More Workhorse
“The Guildford Four and the Birmingham Six are etched into our folk history. Two groups of people who, for several generations, have represented infamy and brutality in the Irish psyche. Fifteen hideous years in prison for ghastly inhuman crimes against innocent people. Except they too were innocent and the hatred their unjust treatment engendered has fed resentment and mistrust ever since 1974. Pubs in Guildford and Woolwich were ripped apart by no-warning IRA bombs. Paddy Armstrong, 24-years-old, was one of those picked up.
He was living in the UK at the instigation of the local priest in Ireland, who told his mother he'd be better off out of the cauldron of Northern Ireland's hatred. A confession had been fabricated and beaten out of them, and he got a life sentence. Fifteen years later, having served time in several prisons, all renowned for the brutality of their regimes - countless beatings and humiliations later, a regime that involved incessant insults and reminders of hopelessness-something happened. Thanks to his lawyer, who never gave up on him, Paddy found that public lauding of "British justice" might actually manifest itself, and the sentences were quashed.
In 2017, Paddy finally put his head above the parapet and wrote a memoir in cooperation with Mary-Elaine Tynan. And seven years later, that memoir has reached the stage - Paddy: The Life and Times of Paddy Armstrong, adapted and writ- ten with stellar simplicity and exquisite tenderness. Tynan is a co-author, as are Niamh Gleeson and, superlatively, the actor Don Wycherley.
Grubby and dressing-gowned, surrounded by his beloved family, a slightly confused 74-year old Paddy is looking for his pills. He's under instruction to take three at lunchtime. One wonders fleetingly how he would cope without the caring regime he lives under. But his sense of humour has never left him, as the memories trigger each other, flitting from boyhood days of poker-playing on the street, to the "glamour" of living in the freedom of a squat with his girlfriend and to the terrible, hate- filled days of being spat upon, literally and figuratively, the endless prison beatings and the hopelessness. He was befriended by one of the Kray brothers who tells himhe's issued orders Paddy is to be left alone. Wycherley is superb, flitting from pathos to sarcasm, from the depths of hell to hoping for a break in the black clouds of his destroyed life. Tynan directs with the kind of empathy born of the many years the two have cooperated in bringing the play to the stage. And there's a simple, effective set by Tina Kavanagh.
- Emer O’Kelly
A TALE OF HUMAN RESILIENCE (GALWAY ADVERTISER INTERVIEW)
Cork actor DON WYCHERLEY talks to Oisín Flores Sweeney ahead of the Galway debut of his one-man-show on the life of Paddy Armstrong, wrongfully convicted for the 1974 Guildford pub bombings.
He is one of the most recognisable faces in Irish film and television, but I sense early in the interview with Don Wycherley that he is not overly comfortable discussing past glories, rendering most of my pre-prepared questions obsolete. “I look a bit different from my Father Ted and Ballykissangel and Bachelor’s Walk days,” he says with a laugh, insisting he doesn’t get recognised on the street as much as one might think.
He is being modest, of course. Time has been kind to the Corkman.
The 57-year-old’s career began at The Abbey in the early 90s: a golden age for Irish theatre. “It was bizarre and extraordinary and a wonderful time.”
Wycherley says he could be sitting around during a bit of downtime, sipping coffee, when the likes of Tom Murphy would just stroll along and strike up conversation. “I was very lucky. Maureen Hughes was casting director at the time, and she cast myself, Aisling O’Sullivan, Stephen Kennedy, and Luke Griffin. She took us all on for a year, on contract, as Abbey players.”
His time at the national theatre started just as the legendary Donal McCann was winding down. On McCann and his infamous production of Faith Healer, Wycherley says: “He was God. I went to see that production. He had an amazing, amazing presence.”
From The Abbey, Wycherley went on to do a lot of work for the big screen, landing roles in major Irish films such as Michael Collins (1996 ), The General (1998 ) and Veronica Guerin (2003 ). But his passion for theatre never waned, even though, as we discussed at length, it is a business that just does not pay.
More recently, Wycherley has landed substantial roles in popular movies, such as Brother Baxter in Sing Street (2016 ) and Chris Muldoon in Wild Mountain Thyme (2020 ), sharing scenes with Emily Blunt.
However when the chance came along to play Paddy Armstrong, one of The Guildford Four, in a play, Wycherley could not resist. This story centres on the resilience of Armstrong's spirit and the power of forgiveness. It dwells on healing the scars of savage injustice.
Those of a certain age will remember the Guildford pub bombings in 1974. Four British soldiers and one civilian were killed, with 65 people injured, some horrifically, when bars near an army base were bombed by the Provisional IRA just before an autumn general election.
Eleven people were wrongfully convicted in the aftermath – the so-called Guilford Four and Maguire Seven – and British police forces were granted draconian powers under the 1974 Prevention of Terrorism Act. For my generation, it was Jim Sheridan’s movie In the Name of the Father (1993 ) that introduced us to this sad part of our history; one rife with prejudice, murder and injustice.
Three Irishmen and one English woman were directly convicted of the Guildford bombings. Armstrong spent 15 years in prison.
“The enormity of what happened… It’s just crazy,” says Wycherley, who is clearly knowledgeable and passionate about the subject. “He wasn’t a military practitioner. It just so wasn’t him, but nobody was even willing to investigate that.”
The play has proven to be moving, but also provocative. After one particular performance, an audience member challenged Wycherley, claiming Armstrong definitely had something to do with the bombings. “I ended up in an argument with him. I said I wouldn’t be doing this if I thought he was involved.”
Based on the memoir Life After Life, co-written by Armstrong and Mary-Elaine Tynan, Paddy - The Life and Times of Paddy Armstrong sold out for four weeks straight at The Viking Theatre in Dublin, very close to where Wycherley and Armstrong both live.
“I met Paddy. He was very funny; charming [and] engaging.”
It was important for Wycherley to get these aspects of Armstrong into the play, rather than it being a mere summary of a book. The two men would meet up frequently for coffee, or go for a walk around Clontarf. “I’m listening to his vocals, his voice, the cadences; what words he used more often. Then I started putting those words into the play.”
The performance won a terrific reception in Dublin, and now this one-man show is aiming to tour all four provinces of Ireland by 2025. Full tour details can be found at www.lifeandtimesofpaddy.com
Next month, the play comes to The Town Hall Theatre in Galway. Wycherley is looking forward to heading back west: “I had some great times doing Rásaí na Gaillimhe down there for TG4. That was great fun, I have to say. I love Galway.”
Audiences may recognise Wycherley more for his TV and movie work, yet the older he gets, the more it seems this remarkably talented actor from Skibbereen wants to put himself in front of theatre audiences.
As he puts it himself: “Your priorities become different. I'm not chasing the American dream or whatever. I'm chasing stuff I want to do.”