THIS stunning play, about losing a friend in the Lockerbie bombing, left me in bits.
So much so that when, at the end, a visibly emotional Annie Lareau – the playwright, lead performer and subject of the piece – invites audience members to talk with her once she had composed herself, I just couldn’t.
I wanted to because I, too, lost someone I knew on PanAm Flight 103 – a classmate from Edinburgh Uni who was flying home for the Christmas holidays, just like Annie’s friends – but I knew the tears that I had been able to hide during the performance would be all too obvious in the harsh daylight.
And I would have felt a fraud because I only knew Andrew from weekly International Law tutorials whereas Annie lost someone far closer, as well as other friends.
But they say you get out of a piece what you take into it, and I remember that night vividly as my aunt stayed just outside Lockerbie and when the family couldn’t get through to her because the lines were down or busy they all phoned me.
Also, there’s a bit in the play when they talk of “bodies echoed, thumping, landing”. My dad’s friend, a builder, had a crew in the area and they were woken up by the sound of people hitting the roof of their Portakabin. I still think of that. And them.
So, yes, to say I was invested in this would be an understatement.
Annie’s aim, unless I’ve wholly misconstrued the piece, is to switch the focus from the macro to the micro, from the perpetrators and the politics behind the outrage to those most affected by it, the dead and those closest to them.
And she and her two cast-mates do this superbly, though as they build up an almost idyllic picture of young pals enjoying life abroad, every so often you’re brought up short by a reminder of where this is all heading.
These scenes are interwoven with others portraying Lockerbie locals who deal with the disaster and its aftermath and while for me they didn’t quite work as well as the rest of the play, that won’t stop me from urging you to see this powerful play.
Fuselage, 15.45. Pleasance Courtyard – Above, until August 25 (not 13 or 19)
