In The Women of Lockerbie, through May 12 at the Actors’ Gang in Culver City, art and accuracy have settled their differences to bring an extraordinary story to the stage.  Deborah Brevoort’s one-act, real-time drama imagines that important night seven years after the 1988 downing of PanAm Flight 103 when a simple act of decency took on epic proportions. With nods to Greek Tragedy, Shakespearean rants on Scottish heaths and American dramas about the power of the common people, Brevoort has created a powerful reminder that air disaster victims include more than the people who fall from the sky. There are also the people who miss them.  And, the people who find them.

In December 1988, the terrorist bombing aboard a New York-bound PanAm flight out of London turned a Boeing 747 into a meteor shower over Lockerbie, Scotland. Everyone onboard and 11 more on the ground were killed.  Most of the 270 victims were American and the majority of those were residents of New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. The tragedy faded first from the headlines, then from memory. Even the airline went out of business and disappeared.

In 1999, interest was renewed when two indictments were handed down against Libyan men charged with the bombing.  The interest continued through the subsequent trial that ended with the sentencing of one defendant in 2002.  During that time, Brevoort’s play, which she had spent five years writing, was introduced with the support of a 2001 Fund for New American Plays grant.

The Women of Lockerbie now gives that historical event a timeless source of revival. It is being produced around the country, but indications are that this is the Southern California premiere. Director Brent Hinkley (whose acting is currently on display in SCR’s My Wandering Boy) infuses the Actor’s Gang staging with a visceral quality.

The play is set in the open space that was the debris field from the wreckage. In the middle of a December night, the sky and earth merge in the inky darkness.  Flashlight beams and distant voices break the stillness at rise. A man calls out for his wife.  She calls back.  But it is her son Adam, a passenger on Flight 103 returning from study abroad, whose name she cries. A dozen passengers seated closest to the explosion disappeared without a trace. Adam was one of these. Without a physical symbol -- even a bone fragment or jacket button — for closure, Madeline’s extraordinary grief has continued unabated.