We are all supposed to be worrying about chemical warfare today but they have had it for years in the East End of Glasgow. Since 1979, in fact, when heroin first hit the streets. Janey Godley’s harrowing yet comic eyewitness account documents the spread of the drug and the devastation it has caused on an already devastated community.

This is the East End of gangsters, street fighters, factory workers and everyone who remembers wee Billy Connolly down their street.

A 17-year-old newly-wed arrives to run the local pub with her harsh but loving husband. From her vantage point behind the bar she observes the first dealers move in, an event followed immediately by the first junkies.

Not only are there smackheads, junkies and single mothers but also artists, musicians and writers seduced by the needle. There are searing bursts of humour as saying yes to smack is put firmly in its cultural context – while the rest of us were watching Charles take Di up the aisle, the junkies are just shooting up or trying to flog her the dirty bra or kitten in their pocket.

It is hard-hitting stuff but Godley is a committed communicator who refuses to over-sentimentalise or lapse into impenetrable colloquialisms, while keeping true to the reality she is sharing

The Stage
31st July 2003

The East End of Glasgow, 1979; and for the first time, major supplies of heroin are beginning to appear on the streets, in an area where - as rising stand-up star Janey Godley points out in this powerful first piece of solo theatre - addiction is already a way of life.

In a room above a pub on the Gallowgate, a teenage girl, the young wife of the publican, faces the choice of whether to try this new form of oblivion. Over the next hour, in two monologues, Godley explores the parallel lives of the woman who says no, and the woman who says yes.

It’s slightly confusing that Godley, who begins her show with a bitter condemnation of the heroin epidemic as a 1980s war on the streets that destroys far more lives than the Falklands conflict, chooses to end it on a slightly ambiguous note, as if she found it hard to say, 24 years on, which decision brought more pain or freedom. But at the very least, the show avoids the temptation to state the obvious, or to indulge in sensationalism about the drugs scene.

And its loving evocation of the crumbling grandeur, social squalor and strange architectural beauty of the East End, reflected in strong black-and-white still images by MB Productions, adds a memorable and poignant sense of place, history and memory, to what’s already a passionate performance.

The Scotsman
13th August 2003

Glasgow Evening Times
19th March 2005

"WHAT IF"... Just two little words.

Glasgow comedian Janey Godley illustrates their profound significance by using them as the jumping off point for her one-woman play Smack - The Point of Yes.

What if Janey Godley hadn't been terrified of her violent husband? What if she'd forgotten her humdrum life as an east end landlady and allowed herself to be seduced by heroin?

She was accompanied on her fantasy at Blawarthill Church Hall last night by a handful of substance users, some people devastated by family drug deaths and interested locals from the community.

She gave a hard-hitting performance as part of the Dumbarton Road Corridor Addiction Awareness Week.

The year is 1979, Godley is managing a pub and its nine flats upstairs with her husband. Calton is ripe to accept a life-changing newcomer: heroin. The play's setup, based on her own experiences, allows Godley to explore two possible avenues: in saying no to heroin, she's left to her mundane existence, witnessing the downwardly spiralling Calton area, the loss of 22 friends to heroin and her mother's death.

By saying yes, she submits to addiction, crime and prostitution.

Godley hones her storytelling skills every week in comedy clubs, but she's even more engaging when sinking her teeth into subjects that matter. She tells us she's no better than addicts - just luckier.

Glasgow Evening Times
18th April 2005

SEE IT!

Daily Mirror
3rd June 2005

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