THE WOMEN OF LOCKERBIE. To 1 October.

London

THE WOMEN OF LOCKERBIE
by Deborah Brevoort

Orange Tree Theatre To 1 October 2005
Mon-Sat 7.45pm Mat Sat 4pm + 15 Sept 2.30pm (with discussion)
Post-show discussion 23 September
Runs 1hr 35min No interval

TICKETS: 020 8940 3633
www.orangetreetheeatre.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 10 September

Ancient Greek and modern grief mix in a finely-woven production.I'd known Lockerbie only from a different type of transport, as a quiet, neatly-kept station on the West Coast line to Glasgow and Edinburgh. It seemed a paradigm of small-town peace, the station neatly floral, the glimpsed town buildings severe and proper. Then December 1998 linked it with the airways as Panam Flight 103 blew up in the skies above, plane, people and belongings showering across the town and its countryside. Lockerbie is a small place.

But if anything could stand as testimony to the human spirit under stress, to a principle of goodness that stands against violence and destruction, it's what Deborah Brevoort has picked from the impact of the terrorist bomb. Not judicial inquiry, international tussling, cover-up or blame-scoring. Brevoort's lighted on one act: that the women of Lockerbie insisted on washing all 11,000 pieces of clothing found after the explosion and returning them to bereaved families.

This cleaning took a year, but is encapsulated at the play's end as the Women wash clothing in the stream which has quietly bubbled through Sam Dowson's set throughout. It's an act providing human warmth against the coldness both of the bombing and American officialdom intent on incinerating the clothing.

Brevoort uses the form and characters of Greek Tragedy. A distracted woman madly searching the moors of Dumfriesshire for her son 7 years after his death. A husband trying to calm her, Todd Boyce's briefly seen official like a power figure from ancient drama. And the chorus of women, calm, yet troubled and concerned at the grief the timing of a luggage-bomb above brought to their town (as well as air passengers and crew, a number of Lockerbie residents were killed, while the threat of trauma must have stalked the town for some time afterwards).

Dowson's stylised setting (crazily-piled platforms as a mountainside) and Oliver Fenwick's subdued lighting (nocturnal and expression of souls in a darkened world) fit perfectly the sustained, unshowy performances with which the local women contrast Lisa Eichhorn's desperation and out-of-site wanderings. Auriol Smith employs both cast and the entire space skilfully in a production that never loses its human-scale.

Madeline Livingston: Lisa Eichhorn
Bill Livingston: John Hudson
Olive Allison: Colette O'Neil
Woman 1: Isobil Nisbet
Woman 2: Emma D'Inverno
Hattie: Nan Kerr
George Jones: Todd Boyce

Director: Auriol Smith
Designer: Sam Dowson
Lighting: Oliver Fenwick
Fight director: Bret Yount
Assistant directors: Imogen Bond, Amy Hodge

2005-09-15 09:14:25