Annie Lareau’s autobiographical three-hander, Fuselage, now at Pleasance Courtyard in Edinburgh, tells the story of the downing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie on 21 December 1988. Lareau lost 35 fellow students from Syracuse University in the bombing, including her best friend Theodora Cohen, and the play centres on her personal experience.
The production, directed by Makaela Milburn and starring Lareau, Peter Dylan O’Connor and Brenda Joyner, follows a group of drama students before the attack. Lareau claims that news reports of atrocities focus on nations and leaders rather than directly affected people, but the play has been criticised for lacking political context.
The review notes that previous Lockerbie dramas, such as Des Dillon’s Lockerbie 103 and David Benson’s Lockerbie: Unfinished Business, addressed causes and cover-ups, whereas Fuselage refers nebulously to “terrorists” and treats the deaths as a personal outrage. The play’s lack of wider context turns a globally significant event into something small and private, according to the critic.
