Paddy – The Life and Times of Paddy Armstrong – Viking Theatre – Review
by Frank L.

The Life and Times of Paddy Armstrong – written by Mary-Elaine Tynan, Don Wycherley and Niamh Gleeson
Dates: Monday 4 November 2024 20:00 – Saturday 30 November 2024 20:00

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.