There is easy theatre – big happy musicals, carefully drawn comedies, those shows people hear about and decide to go see at some large, well-known place with numerous parking spaces.
And then there’s the other kind. The longer I go to theatre, the more I find myself looking forward to plays I haven’t ever seen. Those are nearly always in smaller venues. At least once a year, Google Maps gets me to a new, usually non-traditional place and group. More often than not, these are rewarding experiences.
Right now, for those who are ready for something new, there’s an absolutely must-see show. From SATE Ensemble Theatre at the end of their current “Season of Ritual”, we have The Women of Lockerbie. If the name sounds vaguely familiar, in 1988, a Pan Am flight traveling from London to New York was blown up in mid-air. All 259 on board died, and so did eleven people on the ground in Lockerbie, Scotland, where the remains of the plane fell to earth.
The play is, quite simply, the most accurate, complete picture of grief I’ve ever seen onstage. I know grief. Grief is a friend, and a colleague, of mine. I was an oncology nurse for many years. I’ve studied it, read about it, written papers on it. I still grieve for my beloved husband seven years later. By coincidence, that happens to be the amount of time between the crash and when this play takes place.
Terrible sadness, yes, of course. And yet, and yet...it’s beautiful. It’s emotionally moving, it’s exceptionally well-acted, and it makes an audience appreciate what they are seeing.
A New Jersey couple, Maddy Livingston (Margeau Baue Steinau) and her husband Bill (David Wassilak) have come to Lockerbie for an anniversary service, their first visit after the death of their son on the plann. Maddie roams the hills above the town, looking for something of her son, his spirit, his bones, because he must be there. Bill tells Olive Allison (Leslie Wobbe), a local woman, that his wife is still deep in her grief, crying near-constantly and inconsolable. He doesn’t know how to help her move on. She is, we can see, almost a wild animal.
Allison is accompanied by three women of the town (Sarajane Alverson, Kim Furlow and Jennifer Theby-Quinn) who add to our information. Director Pamela Reckamp talks about the Greek structure of the play and one certainly can acknowledge the three as, in effect, a Greek chorus. But I was reminded of the witches in Macbeth, talking among themselves to our benefit, not malevolent, but with a higher understanding of events than, say, the Livingstons. (It’s a little disconcerting, though, to hear the women singing music that rather sounds like Catholic mass in the very Presbyterian/Church of Scotland home country of John Knox.)
There’s a time crunch working here. George Jones, a State Department representative from the United States has come to oversee the destruction of the personal belongings of the victims. “They’re contaminated. They have jet fuel and blood and…other things on them. They have to be destroyed. That’s the law.” Jones (Michael Cassidy Flynn) is almost frantic, chasing around after the villagers as he hitches up his pants, trying to get them to give up their proposal to wash the items and return them to the victims’ families. Hattie (Teresa Doggett), a local the Americans have hired to clean the warehouse where all this is kept, has a gift for dumb-like-a-fox when dealing with Jones. She makes a fine addition to the Scottish-Greek chorus when push comes to shoving Jones.
Wassilak’s performance is stunning, and Steinau is right there with him. In addition, the seemingly quiet and controlled Wobbe turns in some fine work. Indeed, the whole ensemble is beautifully cast by director Pamela Reckamp, who gives us a fine evening of very serious theatre.
There is nothing wrong with crying. It’s a show that evokes tears, for the characters and for our own losses. Our Anglo Saxon reserve, whether genetic or learned, shouldn’t keep us from honest emotion, and goodness knows plenty of the audience had wet cheeks after the house lights came up. Catharsis is something those old Greek dramatists understood through and through. We probably need it more these days.
A remarkable, stunning show. Go.
The Women of Lockerbie
through November 23
SATE Ensemble Theatre
The Chapel
6238 Alexander Drive
slightlyoff.org
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