The Families of Lockerbie

"When do I get compassionate release?" cries Laura, watching pictures of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi surrounded by his family in Tripoli. The only person ever convicted of the Lockerbie bombing, Megrahi served eight years in prison until his release last year on compassionate grounds because of advanced prostate cancer. A year on, Megrahi is still alive, but 22 years after Pan Am flight 103 exploded over the skies of this small Scottish town, killing all on board and 11 people on the ground, the bereaved are no closer to knowing for certain who placed the bomb on the plane and why. In Michael Eaton's knotty play, fictional characters – an American widow, Laura, whose marine husband died in the bombing, and a British couple, Geoffrey and Maureen, whose musician son was killed – are brought together to be interviewed by a crass TV reporter as Megrahi gets a hero's welcome in Tripoli. Eaton has already written a TV drama-doc on the Lockerbie bombing, and he clearly knows his stuff, but in this uncomfortable hybrid of fact and fiction it often feels as if the facts are getting in the way of a good story. Despite the best efforts of a game cast, this never quite sparks with the passion and fury you might expect. The pathos of people brought briefly together and then torn apart by grief feels too obviously contrived, and drama is often sacrificed to the slow drip-feed of information. The result is a show that sometimes grips you, but never really makes you care enough about the characters or feel the required outrage at the vested interests of governments and business that almost certainly mean there will never be real justice for the families of Lockerbie.