New Lockerbie play to reopen iconic theatre

Playwright Frances Poet, right, worked with Deacon Blue frontman Ricky Ross, left, to create the music for the show

A new stage production about the town of Lockerbie's response to the Pan Am disaster is to reopen the Citizens Theatre in Glasgow.

Small Acts of Love focuses on the people of the town in Dumfries and Galloway who washed, ironed and repaired the clothing and belongings of the passengers and crew who died when a bomb destroyed transatlantic flight in 1988.

Playwright Frances Poet worked with Deacon Blue frontman Ricky Ross to create the music for the production, which will be the first to take place at the iconic theatre since it closed for refurbishment in 2018.

It is due to welcome audiences back in Autumn next year.

The show will be performed by a cast of 14 actor-singers and a five piece band.

The bombing, which took place a few days before Christmas, claimed the lives of all 259 people on board Pan Am flight 103 and 11 Lockebie residents who died when wreckage crashed into a residential street.

The Glasgow-based playwright spent time researching researched the community response to the aftermath of the disaster

Poet spoke to 13 families of the victims and 30 individuals, all of whom were happy for their stories to be included in the final show.

She said "the world lost some amazing people" in the tragedy, adding she wanted the focus to be on them rather than the disaster itself.

"A nineteen- year-old whose diary includes a list of tips for life that just show such insight. A family man whose wife and he were born in the same hospital and from the moment they got together they barely spent any time apart," she said.

"We wanted to honour them and to do that I wanted to be able to name them.

"Often with things that are so traumatic, it can take a few years for people to feel able to talk about it."

She added: "This is about hope and not about hate. That people can come together in grief rather than be driven apart."

All 259 passengers and crew plus 11 people in the town of Lockerbie died in the disaster in December 1988

Libyan intelligence agent Abdelbasset Al-Megrahi was convicted of the murder of 270 people and jailed for life in 2001 after three Scottish judges ruled that he had played a key role in the bombing.

Megrahi was freed on compassionate grounds by the Scottish government while terminally ill with cancer in 2009.

He had always protested his innocence and died in Libya three years later.

In May next year, a second Libyan, Abu Agila Masud, is due to stand trial at a federal court in Washington accused of making the device.

A section of the aircraft wreckage, including parts of the fuselage, was transported to the US as evidence earlier this month.

Artistic director Dominic Hill said he wanted something "new, ambitious and Scottish" to welcome audiences back

Ross said the story continued to cast a shadow over Scotland 36 years later.

He said: "Lots of people will know where they were on that night and out of that terrible story you get a kind of afterlife, which is full of individual moments of human connection.

"Frances had done so much research with the families about all the individuals involved and when you hear those stories, you hear the songs. It's a gut instinct."

'New, ambitious and Scottish'

The production will be the first onstage work at the historic theatre in seven years.

The restoration project – the largest ever undertaken at the 19th century theatre in the Gorbals - has been impacted by Covid and skyrocketing costs.

Glasgow City Council, which owns the theatre, warned last summer that the project was in "imminent danger of liquidation" without further funding.

Since then, the Scottish government has contributed a further £8m, bringing their total contribution to £14m.

The original cost of the project when it began in 2019 was estimated at £20m, but current estimates suggest it could be as much as double that amount.

The theatre said it has raised 92% of the funding, with a further £3.5m still to be found.

Refurbishment work at the Citizens Theatre has been ongoing since 2019

Artistic director Dominic Hill said he wanted something "brand new, ambitious and Scottish" to celebrate the completion of the long-running project.

"I guess people expected us to open with a revival of a Shakespeare play but the new Citizens Theatre is going to be as much about new stories as the classics so this felt like an important statement," he said.

"That was just one of a number of incredible small acts of love that the people of Lockerbie showed the relatives of victims from Pan Am 103 and that became the starting point for this play."