What I liked
The power of it all, leaving me shaken yet more alive and less alone by the shared grief and hatred and release.
What I didn't like
There are a few props at the end that look a bit too clean.
My overall impression
Certainly the destruction of PanAm 103 certainly counts as a tragedy. But this play transforms it into a Tragedy (note the capital T), one of the most powerful I’ve ever seen. Its focus remains squarely not upon the event, which after all lies in the past, but in the aftermath—and by extension such for all the evils, all the pain in the world. Here, during an anniversary event in the Scottish lowlands village where so many died, a New Jersey housewife gives way to her grief. Her husband tries to help, in his tragically (this word applies to so much here) narrow way. They meet the women of this small town who seek permission to be given the clothing of those who died, to wash them in an act of catharsis. What they long for is a way to transform hate into love. Not merely the hate of those who murdered these innocents, but their own hate as well. “Evil came to Lockerbie” they say. What then do we do with that fact? Deborah Brevoort’s play seeks an answer to that question, and true to reality finds more than one. In the process these characters cut open their own souls, bleeding and inviting us to bleed, blending the brew of souls together. Then take it with us as we leave, changed and refined by the ritual of the theatre.
