9/15/22, 3:25 PM Yes So I Said Yes review — horrific violence in Northern Ireland makes for flimsy drama | Times2

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Daragh O’Malley and Kevin Murphy

LIDIA CRISAFULLI

FIRST NIGHT | THEATRE

Yes So I Said Yes review — horrific

violence in Northern Ireland makes for
flimsy drama
Finborough, SW10

Clive Davis

Monday November 29 2021, 12.01am GMT, The Times

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★★☆☆☆

Given the content — anal rape, bestiality and punishment

shootings — I should have spent the rest of the evening in a
state of horror. Instead, the only thought on my mind was why
the Circle Line can be such a torment. David Ireland’s shock
tactics had already receded.

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9/15/22, 3:25 PM Yes So I Said Yes review — horrific violence in Northern Ireland makes for flimsy drama | Times2 | The Times

Yes, there are awful goings-on in this piece — first staged in

Belfast 2011 and now receiving its premiere on the mainland,
courtesy of the director Max Elton — but the piece, although
powerfully acted, is so inconsequential you wonder how Ireland
has managed to stretch such a flimsy conceit.

The Northern Irish-born playwright has form when it comes to

violence. Cyprus Avenue, at the Royal Court in 2016, gave us an
infant girl, assumed by her Loyalist grandfather to be the
incarnation of Gerry Adams, being beaten to a pulp. This time,
in Yes So I Said Yes, an ex-loyalist paramilitary, Alan “Snuffy”
Black, who has corpses to his name, is driven to the point of
madness by the barking of his neighbour’s dog at night.

When he consults a male doctor Snuffy is told he is suffering

from depression. When he confronts his neighbour, he is told
there is no dog. He turns to the BBC, thinking that the presenter
Eamonn Holmes can help. Then the dog does appear, as a man
in a costume. Man and dog kiss and have sex. At which point
two paramilitaries enter and kill the animal before they shoot
Snuffy in the face, groin and knees and cut out his tongue.
Snuffy is confronted with a mediation session where it is
decided that the only fair remedy for the death of the dog is that
he should allow himself to be raped by his neighbour. It duly
happens, although mercifully out of sight behind a screen.

Ireland, a product of a working-class Protestant neighbourhood,

is trying to tell us something about the plight of the Ulsterman
destined to be screwed by all sides in the Troubles. The thing
that leaves an impression is the quality of the performances. As
Snuffy, Daragh O’Malley is a model of barely suppressed rage.
There’s fine support too from Kevin Trainor, Owen O’Neill,
Laura Dos Santos, Kevin Murphy and Declan Rodgers. If only
they had stronger material to work with.

To Dec 18, finboroughtheatre.co.uk

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