Fuselage *****

December 21 is always the longest night of the year. In 1988, it was the darkest.

In the mid-1980s, tensions were rising between some Middle Eastern and North African countries and the United States. In 1984, Libyans acquired timers for bomb detonators. In 1986, a discotheque in West Berlin was bombed, killing three Americans. Shortly afterwards, the US retaliated by bombing Libyan bases, killing an estimated 60 people. In 1988, various reports criticised lax security at Frankfurt airport. That same year, the US mistakenly shot down an Iranian passenger aircraft, killing all 290 people on board. And so to 21 December 1988, when Pan Am flight 103 departed from London to New York, having originated in Frankfurt.

The deadliest terrorist attack in the UK followed. A bomb, sent from Malta to Frankfurt and intended to be aboard this flight, exploded over the Scottish town of Lockerbie, killing 270 people, including 11 on the ground. While most of the victims were American, there were victims from many countries.

Annie Lareau was a drama student at Syracuse University, spending the autumn semester in London with many classmates. Christmas was looming and they were all heading home, but Lareau could not afford to travel with her friends, opting to return alone the next day. This was a tough call for her, as she had a fear of flying.

When news of the bombing broke, she was numb. Theo was her closest friend – now she saw images of Theo’s mother collapsing at the airport.

Of the myriad feelings she had, relief was not one of them. She experienced survivor guilt, which later manifested as self-destruction and self-loathing. The inevitable media frenzy did little to ease her fragile mental state, with a news producer trying to manipulate her into crying for the cameras. At breaking point, she entered a series of abusive relationships, the survivor guilt pushing her to try to feel something.

Fuselage flits between the prelude and aftermath of the bombing and her eventual visit, later in life, to the scene of the crash. Colin, a newly recruited 18-year-old policeman, had been first on the scene. Thirty years later, he is still haunted. A now middle-aged Lareau visits him with her daughter, walking the fields where her friends – and others – landed. The visit was inevitably traumatic, but it appears to provide a modicum of closure.

Multimedia provides the contextual backdrop, with news reports and photographs. Brenda Joyner and Peter Dylan O’Connor play multiple roles, but the focus remains on Annie Lareau, on stage revealing her personal story. Mikaela Milburn’s excellent direction ensures the narrative sweeps along with pace, with silences and stillness landing, the storytelling fluid and nuanced. All the performances are layered – ranging from teenage exuberance and the thrill of adulthood, to conveying the weight of seismic events.

It was not just fragments of the plane that fell onto Lockerbie: body parts, clothing, luggage and personal effects rained down. Lareau had lent Theo an earring, which she recovered from an archived box at Syracuse. One of her friends had bought a deerstalker for her father as a Christmas present, posthumously delivered. These were not just fragments of wreckage – they symbolised fragments of memory. Those who died were not nameless victims; they remain in the thoughts of those who loved them.

Many audience members were reduced to tears by the end, along with a visibly emotional Annie Lareau, whose bravery in telling her story in person is unimaginable. Anyone present will not forget this production any time soon.