Grappling with grief: 'Women of Lockerbie' moving, healing

Grief knows no timetable. Companies give you a scant three days' bereavement leave, friends expect you to be "back to 'normal'" in a few weeks, or surely after a couple months.

But grief stays as long as it wants.

"The Women of Lockerbie," now playing in the Tobye Studio of the Sugden Community Theatre, is a study in grief.

Based on the 1988 bombing of Pam Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, Deborah Brevoort's moving play examines the various faces of grief and how death - even the same death - affects everyone differently.

The play opens with American Bill (Tony Oteri) and Scotswoman Olive (Bonnie Knapp). Both, it turns out, have lost a child and spouse when that plane fell out of the sky. Olive lost her husband and daughter in the falling, flaming wreckage. Bill's 20-year-old son evaporated when the bomb on his plane exploded. Though his wife, Madeline (Debi Garnett) is still alive, her grief is still so raw, he's effectively lost her too.

The couple's strained relationship demonstrates how the death of a child can rock a marriage, and how two people can be so intimate, yet grieve so differently.

COURTESY PHOTO "The Women of Lockerbie" is on stage through Nov. 22 at the Tobye Studio of the Sugden Community Theatre in Naples. The play takes place on the night of the annual memorial service in Lockerbie, Scotland, seven years after the bombing. While some find comfort in ritual and community, Madeline runs out of the church mid-service. She searches the hills for remains of her son.

She is still half-crazed with grief, refusing to be comforted or placated.

This is a wrenching role, and Ms. Garnett plays it well, at full-force, with grief almost too painful to be in the same room with. Mr. Oteri, in contrast, underplays his role too much, for most of the play.

Though his character's presented as the "rational" half of the two, going about living his everyday life, Mr. Oteri needs to fill the role with more nuance. He does have one moving scene where he gives voice to his own grief and finally shows some emotion, but the women are definitely the stronger actors in this production.

Dolores Fetters (Fiona) and Jeannine Hedberg (Katriona) portray two friends of Olive from the village who are also mourning. They are immediately likeable characters and their relationship with each other and with Olive reflects the closeness of the town as well as the affection friends share.

COURTESY PHOTO The Naples Players had to learn a Scottish accent, one of the more difficult ones to learn. The three Lockerbie women act as a kind of Greek chorus (Scottish chorus?), breaking into poetic ode and reciting their lines in rapid sequence, in a cascading effect.

According to the notes of director Anna Segreto, Ms. Brevoort says that she "'set out to write the play in the form of a Greek tragedy' because 'it was a form designed to handle the big emotions and extreme behaviors that attend these kind of events.'"

The interplay between the three women is wonderful to watch. They too, are hurt and grieving, yet they are full of tenderness and caring. They want to heal, they want the families of the plane's victims to heal.

Ms. Knapp is especially effective in this play. While it is an ensemble piece, it is Ms. Knapp's strong hand at the rudder that confidently and boldly steers this piece. You get the feeling that her character can do almost anything, set anything right.

Though a moving piece of theater, the play falls short in the staging. There are moments when Madeline is supposed to be roaming the hills of Lockerbie and the other actors have to pretend not to see her, even though she's literally only feet away. There seems to be too little space for the action.

Adding to the problem is the set, by Jeff Weiss. The river in the front is effective, but the rocks and hills in the rear of the stage seem more like poorly disguised building blocks or crates for the actors to endlessly clamber upon. Perhaps if the black box seating had been proscenium seating (where the audience faces the stage straight on) instead of thrust seating (where the audience sits on three sides of the stage), the actors may have had more space in which to perform.

Conversely, Mr. Weiss also provided some music for the play, and it works well in heightening the emotional temperature of the play.

George Jones (Daniel Atkinson), an America bureaucrat, shows up near the end of the play. The evidence from the crash, including suitcases and clothing from the incident, has been stored in a warehouse, on "the shelves of sorrow." Now, after seven years, the American government has determined that the clothing should be burned, and have sent Jones to oversee its destruction.

But the women of Lockerbie want to wash all the items of clothing and have them returned to the families. In doing so, they wish to heal themselves, and also provide comfort to the grieving families. It seems an action somewhat akin to washing and preparing the bodies of those who have died. But, in this case, there aren't bodies left to care for, only belongings. (And, as Bill and Madeline demonstrate, even a piece of clothing belonging to a loved one who's dead can provide great comfort.)

Mr. Atkinson plays the role with much brashness, but struck me as too young for the role.

Janina Birtolo as Hattie, the cleaning woman at Jones's office, provides much-needed comic relief late in the one-act play. She's a sprite, a jester, a good-hearted woman who's quite willing to play dumb. Ms. Birtolo throws herself into the role with relish. Her scenes contain moments of lighthearted slapstick, with Ms. Birtolo "accidentally" smacking her boss in the face with her mop a number of times.

Costume designer Mark Vanagas has provided costumes that are, for the most part, earth tones: beiges, tans, fawn colors, the colors implying that the women are earthy or representatives of the land. And the women's Scottish accents were on-target and realistic.

This is a powerful play. The night I saw it, people in the audience were crying and sniffling in response.

Yet, it is also a very healing play.

"Grief needs to talk," Olive says at one point.

And it does. It also needs to be acknowledged by others.

In "The Women of Lockerbie," this sextet of actors examine grief and loss in all its varying forms and faces. It acknowledges grief of all kinds and listens to what it has to teach us.

It gives grief expression.

If you go

>>What: "The Women of Lockerbie"

>>Where: Tobye Studio of the Sudgen Community Theatre, 701 Fifth Avenue South, Naples

>>When: through Nov. 22

>>Cost: $20 ($10 for students with ID)

>>Info: Call (239) 263-7990, go to the box office in person, or go to www.naplesplayers.org