Words: Rosie Hall
3 stars
Writer and actor Annie Lareau’s autobiographical play Fuselage tells the story of Pan Am flight 103, the transatlantic flight which was blown apart by a bomb over the small Borders town of Lockerbie just before Christmas in 1988. The Lockerbie disaster is a familiar tragic story for many, especially audiences in Scotland, but for Lareau it is personal: many of her friends from Syracuse University were on that very flight, heading home to their families for Christmas. Though Lareau eulogises many of her friends who were killed in the bombing, much of the performance centres her relationship with her best friend, Theodora Cohen. She paints vivid portraits of all of the friends who she lost, but the recounting of her friendship with Theo is carefully crafted and the vignettes of their friendship particularly heart-breaking.
Lareau plays herself, with Peter Dylan O’Connor and Brenda Joyner playing all the other roles: initially her rabble of friends at Syracuse, including those who joined her on a gap year in London, and then later the community of Lockerbie as she visits, decades later, to stand on the soil that became the final resting place of her friends. The dialogue and characterisation bounces back and forth effectively, full-blooded performances married perfectly with a lively and well-wrought script. The Scottish accents of the Lockerbie locals were heroically attempted, but unfortunately veered wildly between Eastern Europe and the west coast of Ireland, which slightly marred the emotional hit of the scenes in Scotland.
Lareau’s story is recounted alongside digitally rendered background photos, projected on the screen behind the cast, as well as real photos of her friends that appear throughout. The story is also punctuated with newscasts on this same screen, which track the political rumblings of the bomb plot alongside the blissful ignorance of Lareau and her friends in real time. Though the newscasts are effective as a plot device, the background images distract the audience’s attention from the performances and the potency of the verbal descriptions, of Lareau’s memories as she tells them herself. Real loss and real grief is palpable in Fuselage, and this, along with excellent writing, can and should speak for itself.
Fuselage
Pleasance Courtyard Above
15.45
30th Jul – 25th Aug