"The Women of Lockerbie" recounts historical events in dramatic form, but in a format that stretches beyond documentary recitals of facts. One sees elements of classic Greek and Japanese theater in the way that details are described rather than shown. The action is minimal. Through a single 85-minute scene, it feels like a series of pictures in which one character reveals his or her emotions while others comment on it. Running between these tableaux, like the (painted) stream that both connects and divides Brian Saylor's stark set, are the key themes of anger, grief and compassion, life and death.
The story deals with women in Lockerbie, Scotland, who — after the bombing of a jetliner over their village — gathered and washed the clothes of the victims to return to their survivors. It is seven years since the 1988 bombing, long since out of the news. The mother (Tamara Rothman) of a young man who died in the plane searches the Scottish hills for any relic of her son, wandering in a state of near madness while her husband (Jay Burns) tries to calm her. Olive (Linda Benson), a woman of the village, encounters him and, with two other women (Amanda Cantrell and Rebecca Mahar), empathizes with him. They lament that an American official (R. Scott Cantrell) has decided to burn the contaminated clothing stored in the "shelves of sorrow" as the investigation of the incident winds down. However, the official's cleaning lady (Scarlet Kittylee Boudreaux) has a plan to thwart him.
All of this would make a great HBO movie. But playwright Deborah Brevoort is striving to attain something more substantial. Brevoort, an Alaska resident in the years before "Women" brought her international attention, has increasingly concerned herself with opera librettos and musicals, including "King Island Christmas" and projects with Anchorage Opera. There is a strong feeling of song in this play. Characters repeat one another as in an ensemble. Ideas reappear like musical motifs. A sort of theatrical counterpoint and development borders on the symphonic. The language touches on lyric sentiments like "Death is a visitor whose stay is short ... Grief is a guest who stays for too long" and "Hatred is just love that has been wounded."
Wounded love and anger duel throughout the script. The bereaved mother is angry at her husband for not showing his pain. The husband is angry at her for making him take care of all the nasty, necessary business that falls to survivors. The American official is angry at the Scots for interfering with his career and the Scots are angry at the USA because a plane full of Americans fell on their homes and killed their kin. Everyone is mad at the people who put the bomb on the plane. The beauty of the play is how Brevoort resolves the turmoil into compassion and hope.
Directed by Bob Pond, this staging by RKP Productions in conjunction with Anchorage Community Theatre does not do the playwright justice. Instead of a straight line carrying us from start to finish, it lurches, unable to decide which way to go. Soliloquies, where characters alone onstage might disclose themselves directly to the audience, are delivered to the air in front of other characters listening in. Rothman stalks in and out like a raving piece of scenery rather than a human being with believable burdens. Benson is almost icily cool, nearly a masked noh player — which might be the right way to approach the whole play. Among the three Americans and four Scots only one, Mahar, has a brogue, a big mistake. Boudreaux and R. Scott Cantrell seem the most comfortable and effective in their roles, perhaps because they have the comic parts.
The climax seemed tacked on, a pat wrap-up that surely is more effectively nuanced in the productions that have been praised by critics in Europe. One notes, however, enough bad reviews in the mix to suspect that other companies have also failed to grasp the elusive core of the play. Nonetheless, "The Women of Lockerbie" is a major work of modern theater and, directorial shortcomings aside, its importance is evident in the current production.
"The Women of Lockerbie" will be presented at 7 p.m. Thursday-Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday through Nov. 22 at Alaska Pacific University's Grant Hall. Tickets are available at actalaska.org.