The Lockerbie Bomber play in Larbert

[The following is excerpted from an article published today on the website of The Falkirk Herald:]

Two local theatre groups will go head to head when Larbert’s Dobbie Hall [Main Street, Larbert FK5 4BL] hosts a popular drama festival this weekend.

On Sunday evening, the Falkirk District round of the Scottish Community Drama Association’s one-act play festival features plays from two talented local clubs (...)

Closing the festival are Tryst Theatre with The Lockerbie Bomber by Larbert writer Kenneth N Ross.

It’s an emotional and soul-searching drama about the Lockerbie disaster which claimed 270 lives when a jumbo jet crashed in the Scottish town in 1988.

The actors are Carol Clark, Jim Allan, Alan Clark, Rhona Law, Brian Paterson and Craig Murray. (...)

The evening starts at 7.30pm on Sunday [22 February]. Tickets £7 (concessions £4) are available at the door or by telephoning (01324) 624449.

[Here is a review of the play from May 2012.]

In search of truth

[This is the heading over a letter from Iain McKie published in today’s edition of The Scotsman.  It reads as follows:]

The Edinburgh Festival Fringe consistently surprises, delights and sometimes disappoints, but without it our culture would be poorer and a powerful medium for political expression would be lost to the people of Scotland.

While entertaining, the Fringe, as part of this remit, has a duty to challenge the status quo and make us ponder on issues of the day.

This year two major issues, the ongoing independence debate and the [21 December 25th] anniversary of the Lockerbie Pan Am bombing, are tackled in The Lockerbie Bomber, a new play presented by Falkirk’s Tryst Theatre Company.

Dramatic, insightful and superbly acted and presented, it forces us to remember and reflect on the greatest terrorist outrage ever committed in the UK.

It is also a reminder that despite the human suffering and the political expressions of outrage, governments, including ours in Scotland, have procrastinated, dissembled and protected the guilty by placing their own interests above those of the victims, their families and friends and the people of Scotland.

The play challenges the viewer to consider how an independent Scotland can ever be a stronger and better country when our politicians cannot “independently” work to resolve what has become “Scotland’s shame”.

The Lockerbie Bomber has lived in my memory and challenged me, a supporter of independence, to reflect on whether an independent Scotland would lead to a more just society or sadly just more of the same.

The irony that the play is showing in C Venues in Chambers Street, the very home of the Crown Office, that immovable barrier to the truth about Lockerbie, will not be lost on those of us who seek truth and justice.

Lockerbie cover-up reduces Scotland to a banana republic

[What follows is the text of a press release regarding the Edinburgh Festival Fringe production of the play The Lockerbie Bomber:]

The writer of a new play about the Lockerbie bombing believes the truth has been covered up, resulting in Scotland being reduced today to the level of a corrupt banana republic.

Alan Clark, whose play The Lockerbie Bomber is being staged for the first time at the Edinburgh Fringe next month, says: “I believe the truth has been covered up for nearly twenty-five years. We shake our heads in disbelief as we hear allegations of evidence withheld. Evidence fabricated. Witnesses paid for their testimony. Even serious allegations that members of the Scottish prosecution team at the Camp Zeist trial perverted the course of justice.

“If that were another country, it would rightly be ridiculed but this actually is Scotland today. In the eyes of the world, I believe Scottish justice, often held up as a shining example of fairness and decency, is being reduced to the level of a corrupt, banana republic.

“As one of the characters in the play says: 'Sooner or later, to protect itself, the Scottish Government will have to cast the Crown Office adrift and abandon the fiction that Megrahi’s conviction is safe.'”

When Pan Am Flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie on 21 December 1988, 270 people from 21 countries perished and it remains the worst terrorist atrocity ever committed in the UK. Its consequences continue to reverberate round the world and yet, after nearly a quarter of a century, the truth remains elusive.

Carefully researched, The Lockerbie Bomber looks at the bombing from three different perspectives: the victims' families; journalists investigating the case; and the US and UK security services engaged in covering up what happened.

Dr Jim Swire, who lost a daughter on Pan Am 103, was at the premiere and commented: “This is a searing and soul-searching drama of international significance which dramatically shows how absolute power corrupts absolutely and how individuals and nations are diminished by the lies told in their names.”

Herman Grech of the Times of Malta added: “The play struck me because it recalls the bombing of the aircraft in its vivid, horrific detail. But most of all, the script challenges the audience into thinking whether, beyond the odd newspaper headline, this could have been one of the grossest miscarriages of justice of our times.”

And critic Joyce McMillan said it is “an important and passionate play.”

The play is sponsored by solicitors Mitchells Roberton, The BenRiach Distillery Company, accountants FL Walker & Co, financial advisers The Wealth Partnership and Tryst Gymnastics Club.

The Lockerbie Bomber will be performed by Nugget Theatre Company at C Venues in Edinburgh's Chambers Street on July 31-August 13 daily at 12 noon.

Awards for Lockerbie-related productions

The Aljazeera English documentary Lockerbie: Case closed has won a silver world medal in the Best Investigative Report category at the 2013 New York Festivals: World’s Best TV & Films. The documentary can be viewed here on You Tube.

Tryst Theatre’s production of Kenneth N Ross’s play The Lockerbie Bomber at the Hertford Theatre Week 2013 won both the Ted Harden Rose Bowl as runner-up in the adjudication and also the Freston Salver awarded by audience votes for the play they had enjoyed the most.  The play has a two-week run on the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in August and there is to be a performance in Malta in November.

English première of The Lockerbie Bomber play

A play telling the story of the Lockerbie bombing will make its English première in Hertford Theatre Week.

Scottish company Tryst Theatre will perform The Lockerbie Bomber, which focuses on the 1988 bombing of Pam Am 103 that resulted in the death of 270 people, on Saturday April 27, the final day of the festival at Hertford Theatre. (...)

Each play starts at 7.45pm and awards will be handed out after the final show.

Tickets cost £11 (...)

[The above is taken from the website of the Hertfordshire Mercury. Further blogposts about this play can be read here.]

Lockerbie bomb play may be shown in Malta

[This is the headline over a report published today on the BBC News website. It reads as follows:]

Talks are under way to stage a new play in Malta about the Lockerbie bombing.

The 1988 bombing of Flight 103 over Lockerbie killed 270 people and was the worst terrorist atrocity in UK history.

The Lockerbie Bomber is the latest in a long line of books and plays tackling the subject, and it will be performed in Alloa's Alman Theatre this week.

Malta is a key location in the case, and a theatre director in the capital, Valletta, is now in talks with writer Alan Clark about staging it there.

The Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci was a crucial witness in the trial, identifying the only man convicted of the atrocity, Abdelbaset Al-Megrahi.

Mr Gauci owned Mary's House clothes shop in the port of Sliema, and according to evidence given at Megrahi's trial in 2000, he sold him clothes which were said to have been wrapped around the bomb which brought down the flight.

Megrahi was also said to have loaded the bomb onto an Air Malta Flight at the island's Luqa airport.

He was convicted in 2001 but was released by the Scottish government on compassionate grounds in 2009, after being diagnosed with terminal cancer. He died last year.

The new play about the bombing considers events from three perspectives; families, journalists and security experts.

And Valletta theatre director Herman Grech is keen to stage it in the Maltese capital later this year.

He said: "The play struck me because it recalls the bombing of the aircraft in its vivid, horrific detail.

"But most of all, the script challenges the audience into thinking whether, beyond the odd newspaper headline, this could have been one of the grossest miscarriages of justice of our times.

"I have also found it ironic that while the Maltese government has maintained that the bomb never departed from the island's airport, it has remained reluctant to challenge the accusations against Megrahi."

Mr Clark said: "Mr Grech and I have had preliminary discussions about performances in Malta. It's especially interesting because Malta has particular relevance to Lockerbie, an angle that the play examines."

He said he hoped performances of the play, both in Scotland and in Malta, would boost calls for an independent public inquiry into the prosecution of the case.

And Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora died in the attack, said: "I welcome the play as it tries to shed light on what happened when the investigation went off the rails."

[What follows is the full text of a press release from Tryst Theatre:]

A Maltese theatre director has expressed an interest in staging a new play by a Scottish writer about the Lockerbie bombing.

Malta-based Herman Grech is in discussions with writer Alan Clark about presenting The Lockerbie Bomber in Valletta later this year.

The bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie killed 270 people and was the worst terrorist atrocity in the UK. Now, for the first time, the horrific tragedy has been brought to the stage in this new work which attempts to lift the veil of secrecy thrown over the bombing by successive Governments and security services.

Mr Grech, who is also Head of Media at The Times of Malta, said: "The play struck me because it recalls the bombing of the aircraft in its vivid, horrific detail. But most of all, the script challenges the audience into thinking whether, beyond the odd newspaper headline, this could have been one of the grossest miscarriages of justice of our times.

“I have also found it ironic that while the Maltese government has maintained that the bomb never departed from the island's airport, it has remained reluctant to challenge the accusations against Megrahi." [RB: An article on Lockerbie and Malta by Herman Grech can be read here.]

Alan Clark said: “Mr Grech and I have had preliminary discussions about performances in Malta. It’s especially interesting because Malta has particular relevance to Lockerbie, an angle that the play examines.

“The Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci identified Megrahi, the only man convicted of the atrocity, as resembling the man who bought clothes in his shop. Megrahi was at Malta’s Luqa Airport on the day of the bombing. It’s alleged the bomb was put on a feeder flight at Luqa which went to Frankfurt and then to London Heathrow before detonating over Lockerbie. Following the bombing, a small fragment of printed circuit board was found embedded in a scrap of the Maltese clothing. After Megrahi was convicted, Tony Gauci and his brother were paid an alleged $3m for their evidence by the US Department of Justice ‘Rewards for Justice’ programme. So Malta is absolutely central to the case.”

Clark continued: “It’s worth pointing out that the trial judges had problems with how the suitcase containing the bomb got loaded at Malta. In their determination, they said: ‘The absence of an explanation as to how the suitcase was taken into the system at Luqa is a major difficulty for the Crown case but after taking full account of that difficulty, we remain of the view that the primary suitcase began its journey at Luqa.’”

He added: “Since then, compelling new evidence has come to light that the verdict was terribly flawed – the Heathrow break-in, the bomb timer fragment, the view of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission that there were six separate grounds where there may have been a miscarriage of justice. So it seems to me the only way the matter can be satisfactorily resolved is by having an independent public inquiry, not into Lockerbie itself, but specifically into the prosecution of the case – as allegations of evidence fabricated and evidence withheld continue to be made.

“I hope performances of the play, both here and in Malta, help us move towards such an inquiry.”

The play has been seen and welcomed by members of the Justice for Megrahi group. Founded in November 2008, the campaign maintains that the conviction of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi for the Lockerbie bombing was a miscarriage of justice.

One of its members is former Police Superintendent Iain McKie who was at the premiere. “This is a challenging and thought-provoking play that brings the human suffering and political chicanery behind the tragedy of Lockerbie to vivid and dramatic life. It should be required viewing for every Scot as a reminder of a disaster that has become an indelible stain on the reputation ofScotland and its justice system."

And Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora died in the attack, commented: “I welcome the play as it tries to shed light on what happened when the investigation went off the rails. I believe Megrahi was wrongly identified.”

Tryst Theatre is staging The Lockerbie Bomber in Alloa’s Alman Theatre from January 17-19 at 8pm. Call the Box Office on 07929 561 311 for tickets.

[This story features on the website of the Maltese newspaper The Independent, but not, strangely enough given Mr Grech's links, on that of The Times of Malta.]

'Despicable' Lockerbie play had to be made

[This is the headline over a report published yesterday on the website of the Alloa Advertiser.  It reads as follows:]

The director of an Alloa play branded "despicable" by a woman whose daughter was murdered in the Lockerbie atrocity says he respects her view - but believes he was right to make the production.

Alan Clark's The Lockerbie Bomber, which depicts convicted and now deceased Libyan Abdelbaset al-Megrahi as a victim, goes on show next week at the Alman Theatre amid a storm of controversy.

Its story centres on a belief held by many - including another victim's father - that Megrahi was wrongly held responsible for the 1988 terrorist attack on Pan Am flight 103 from London to New York, which killed 270 people.

However, that view was met with revulsion last week by American Susan Cohen (74), whose 20-year-old daughter Theodora perished in the blast.

She said, "Megrahi murdered my daughter - he's not a victim. It is repulsive to put Theodora's name in with his. Does he have any idea how horrible that is to the families?

"It's despicable and so insulting to those who lost relatives."

Speaking to the Advertiser, Alan (59), who wrote the play under the pseudonym of Kenneth N Ross, was at pains to stress that he sympathised with Susan's grief.

It is his belief, though, that Megrahi, who died of cancer in May 2012 almost three years after he was granted compassionate release from prison in Scotland, was the victim of a cover-up - and he hopes his play will cast a new light on to the matter.

Alan said, "I am so sorry for Mrs Cohen's loss. She clearly believes Megrahi was guilty as charged and I respect that view. She obviously wants closure and doesn't want this painful memory opened up again.

"However, the verdict now looks increasingly flawed and I hope that the play casts some light on this evidence. I hope it leads to a public enquiry into the prosecution of the case and the evidence suppressed and tampered with."

Alan was inspired to write the story after Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill declared on Megrahi's release that he "now faces a sentence imposed by a higher power. It is terminal, final and irrevocable. He is going to die".

Alan, from Larbert, said, "It sounded biblical. I wondered if it was all as it seemed. I came with an open mind and thought Megrahi must be guilty. He was convicted - surely they got it right. The more I delved, the more I thought it was strange and could make an interesting play."

The director, who has acted and directed with Falkirk's Tryst Theatre for around 20 years, took six months to finish the play - from the initial idea to the final 14th draft.

He managed to obtain authentic props from a disused Boeing 747 at Prestwick Airport and on Googling the plane's reference number was shocked to find out that it was a sister Pan Am of the Lockerbie one that crashed.

The harrowing play is set in the present day and looks at the tragedy from three different perspectives - a victim's family, journalists investigating the case, and the UK and US security services engaged in covering up what happened.

Grangemouth, Greenock, Glasgow and Guantanamo Bay are cleverly linked in the gritty and fast-moving 75-minute piece.

The play highlights several questions in the Megrahi case - including a claim that evidence was suppressed following an alleged break-in at the Heathrow baggage area 16 hours before take-off, and further theories that a fragment of the bomb found at Lockerbie did not come from a batch of timers sold to Libya in 1985, and how the Scottish criminal cases review commission found six separate grounds of appeal.

Alan's compelling writing also puts a spotlight on Maltese storekeeper Tony Gauci - a crucial witness for the prosecution who testified that he had sold Megrahi the clothing later found in the remains of the suitcase bomb.

At the trial, Gauci was said to have appeared uncertain about the exact date he sold the clothes in question, and was not entirely sure that it was Megrahi to whom they were sold.

Gauci was the only witness to link Megrahi directly to the improvised explosive device (IED) and it was later reported in October 2007 that he received a $2 million reward for testifying.

Alan added, "I personally believe Megrahi was set up and there's been a miscarriage of justice. Sooner or later, to protect itself, the Scottish Government will have to cast the Crown Office adrift and abandon the fiction that Megrahi's conviction is safe."

Falkirk's Tryst Theatre presents The Lockerbie Bomber at the Alman's Coach House Theatre, Alloa, from January 17-19 at 8pm. Tickets are £10 and are available from the Alman Box Office on 07929 561331.

[A review of the premiere of this play can be read here.]

Further performances of "The Lockerbie Bomber"

[What follows is taken from the website of Tryst Theatre:]

Tryst will perform The Lockerbie Bomber in the Alman Theatre [Alloa] on January 17-19.

The bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie killed 270 people and was the worst terrorist atrocity in the UK. Now, for the first time, the horrific tragedy is brought to the stage in this new work which lifts the veil of secrecy thrown over the bombing by successive Governments and security services.

The harrowing play, which is dedicated to the memory of the victims of Lockerbie and their families, is set in the present day and looks at the bombing from three different perspectives – the victims’ families, journalists investigating the case and the UK and US security services engaged in covering up what happened. It links Grangemouth, Greenock, Glasgow and Guantanamo Bay in the gritty and fast-moving 75-minute piece.

The play was specially written for Tryst and its six actors Jim Allan, Alan Clark, Carol Clark, Rhona Law, Craig Murray and Brian Paterson.

Director Alan Clark said: “Almost twenty-four years to the day, Lockerbie still looms large over Scotland and there are still unanswered questions over what happened that December night and who is ultimately responsible for two hundred and seventy murders. As one of the characters says: “A few people, high up in the US and UK Governments, know exactly what happened, but they’re never going to tell us.”"

Writer Kenneth N. Ross said: “I wrote the play, my first, as a reminder that the 270 victims and their families still await justice. The more I researched and delved, the clearer it became that Scottish justice and successive Governments have failed them terribly. Like all Scots, I was appalled by Lockerbie. And like a lot of Scots, I personally believe there’s been a miscarriage of justice and a cover-up.”

And he added: “It has scenes which will shock and disturb but compared to the horrors that happened at Lockerbie that night, it’s nothing.”

The play has been seen and welcomed by members of the Justice for Megrahi group. Founded in November 2008, the high-profile campaign maintains that the conviction of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi for the Lockerbie bombing was a miscarriage of justice and its main objective is to have Mr al-Megrahi’s conviction quashed.

One of its members is retired Police Superintendent Iain McKie who was at the premiere. “This is a challenging and thought-provoking play that brings the human suffering and political chicanery behind the tragedy of Lockerbie to vivid and dramatic life. It should be required viewing for every Scot as a reminder of a disaster that has become an indelible stain on the reputation of Scotland and its justice system."

The Lockerbie Bomber is on at the Alman Theatre [Alloa] on January 17-19 at 8pm. Tickets, £10, are available form the Alman Box Office on 07929 561 331.

[A review by Vronsky of the first performance of this play can be read here.]

Further performances of The Lockerbie Bomber play

If you missed Tryst Theatre’s performance of Kenneth N Ross’s play The Lockerbie Bomber in May, you might be interested to know there are four further performances arranged for early September at The MacRobert Playhouse Theatre in Stirling. Tickets are now on sale.

Controversial and heart-rending: the destruction of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie in December 1988 killed 270 people and was the worst terrorist atrocity in the UK. Now, for the first time, the horrific tragedy is brought to the stage in this new play which lifts the veil of secrecy thrown over the bombing.

“A few people, high up in the US and UK Governments, know exactly what happened, but they’re never going to tell us.”

"Sooner or later, to protect itself, the Scottish Government will have to cast the Crown Office adrift and abandon the fiction that Megrahi’s conviction is safe."

The cast is Carol Clark, Rhona Law, Jim Allan, Brian Paterson, Craig Murray and Alan Clark.

A review of the May show is at http://lockerbiecase.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/review-by-vronsky-of-lockerbie-bomber.html

The MacRobert Playhouse Theatre, University of Stirling, Saturday 8 and Sunday 9 September at 7.00pm and 9.00pm both nights. Tickets £10 and £9 (concessions) from the MacRobert Box Office on 01786 466666 or at www.macrobert.org

[From an e-mail from Alan Clark.]

Review by Vronsky of "The Lockerbie Bomber"

I went to see Falkirk Tryst Theatre’s production, “The Lockerbie Bomber” last night (26th May). This was the premiere of a script by Kenneth Ross, pseudonym of Alan Clark, a member of the theatre company. The audience of around one hundred in Falkirk Town Hall included Dr Jim Swire, who briefly addressed the audience after the performance. I don’t know what opportunity there will be for others to see this play, but see it if you can. The atmosphere is intense, and at no stage did I feel I was watching amateur players.

The play examines the events and aftermath of the bombing through the eyes of a couple who lost a young child in the disaster, a pair of investigative journalists, and two spooks – one British, one CIA.

Scottish art from the fifteenth century makars up to Irvine Welsh has tended to look at the world through more unflinching eyes than our southern neighbours, and Ross’s play follows in that tradition. The stage set is a litter of aeroplane wreckage which the actors continuously wander through, adopting as furniture for the scene in progress so that all action takes place among this debris of disaster. 

Ross seems to have worked on the assumption that the audience knows nothing of the detail of the Camp Zeist trial – a defensible assumption, but it leads to some lengthy exposition in dialogue. However as journalist Maggie McInnes, played with fine conviction by Rhona Law, sits down to write her exposé, dark forces are already at work and the dramatic pace rises. When an attempt by the British intelligence officer to silence the journalists by leaking a little of the truth fails, the CIA agent resorts to more traditional methods. Maggie is abducted and tortured, in one of the most chilling pieces of theatre I have seen, and I go to a lot of theatre. Of course in the real world it is quite unnecessary to torture journalists in order to have them ‘toe the line’ – their willing self-censorship is almost as horrifying as the breaking of fingers.

As the journalists and the bereaved family try to piece together what has happened, the secret agents meet in the background and arrange events and outcomes as they are instructed. The CIA man is a straightforward thug who enjoys his work, while the British agent recognises the human damage they are doing but wearily accepts the ‘realpolitik’. He expresses the only note of optimism in the play: he expects that the Scottish government, for its own survival, must at some point cut its support for the Crown Service and allow the truth to emerge. The play ends with the cast all on stage, simply standing and staring in silence at the audience for a long moment. There are no bows or curtain calls - Lockerbie is unfinished business. 

New Lockerbie play to be premiered in Falkirk

[The following is taken from the What’s On Scotland website:]

The bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie killed 270 people and was the worst terrorist atrocity in the UK. Now, for the first time, the appalling tragedy is being brought to the stage in a new play presented by Falkirk’s Tryst Theatre. The Lockerbie Bomber by Kenneth Ross dramatises the search for the truth about the 1988 outrage. Tryst will perform the premiere of the harrowing and hard-hitting play in Falkirk on May 26. The six parts are taken by Jim Allan, Alan Clark, Carol Clark, Rhona Law, Craig Murray and Brian Paterson. Director Alan Clark said: “The play is set in the present day and looks at the Lockerbie bombing from three different perspectives – the victims’ families, journalists investigating the case, and the UK and US security services engaged in cynically covering up what happened.” The play, which explores this veil of secrecy, is described as “docu-drama faction” and links Grangemouth, Greenock, Glasgow and Guantanamo Bay in the gritty and fast-moving 70-minute piece. “The writer says it’s a mix of fact and fiction plus conspiracy theories and some interesting speculation,” explained Alan. He added: “We were attracted to it because it’s new, challenging, contemporary theatre and the issues surrounding the bombing are currently front-page news all round the world. Twenty-four years on, Lockerbie still looms large over Scotland and there are still unanswered questions over what happened that night and who is ultimately responsible for two hundred and seventy deaths. As one of the characters says: 'A few people, high up in the US and UK Governments, know exactly what happened, but they’re never going to tell us.'" The premiere of The Lockerbie Bomber takes place on Saturday May 26 at 8pm in Falkirk Town Hall. Tickets, £7 and £5 (concessions) are available from the Tryst Theatre Box Office on 01324 715886, from the Steeple Box Office on 01324 506850, from club members or at the door on the night.