Truth being deliberately denied to Lockerbie relatives

[What follow are excerpts from an article by Phyllis Stephen published today on the website of The Edinburgh Reporter: Those of a sensitive disposition are warned that the article contains a photograph in which I appear.]

One of the best things about the Fringe is that no performance is generally ever more than an hour long.  The problem for this play was that this is a huge story, and a massive conspiracy theory is being unearthed during the telling of it, meaning perhaps that an hour is too short.

The story is powerfully written and powerfully told with only six Pan-Am seats on stage (looking for all the world like upright coffins at first glance) and few other props other than the odd newspaper or handbag. The conversations are taking place all at the same time, just as they would be on the doomed plane when it took off. All of this interaction was carried off with complete aplomb by the six actors from Lee Gershuny’s Edinburgh-based The Elements World Theatre.

Even though you know what happened, there is still a moment of complete shock in store for the audience, and that is made all the more powerful by the scant set.

Dr Jim Swire, father of 23 year-old Flora who died in the crash, has long maintained that there is more to the story. He and Professor Robert Black, Emeritus Professor of Scots Law at University of Edinburgh, write regularly along with Peter Biddulph about their investigations and concerns connected to the Lockerbie bombing (...)  Dr Swire spoke at the opening of Lockerbie: Lost Voices.  After declaring the play ‘skilfully done’, he described crucial evidence that, as alleged in last year’s book Megrahi: You are my Jury by John Ashton, had not been taken into account before the verdict was given in the trial of al-Megrahi.

He said: “A statement from Downing Street was released that branded this book an ‘insult to the relatives’, but that statement itself was the insult, because the relatives just want to know the truth. We are being deliberately denied this by the prosecution service of Scotland. The bombing was clearly a revenge attack; clearly preventable, and that is all here in this play. The people of Scotland have got to rise up and say ‘this isn’t good enough’.” (...)

Professor Black has campaigned long and hard on behalf of what he perceives as the wrong done to the Scottish justice system, and he told The Edinburgh Reporter that he is convinced that the conviction of Abdelbaset Ali Al-Megrahi will be overturned during his lifetime. Well we shall have to wait and see about that.

But first of all you can go and see the play (...) at the Netherbow Theatre in The Scottish Storytelling Centre over the next three weeks.  A story to give you food for thought, well written and well acted.

[An interview with the playwright, Lee Gershuny, and with the play’s actor-director, Corinne Harris, can be viewed, along with rehearsal footage, on the ITV Border website.]