Plume – review

http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2012/mar/05/plume-review

Version 0 of 1.

The birds and the bees in JC Marshall's timely play signify not sex but death. In a poetic flourish, she pictures the victims of a mid-air terrorist atrocity being accompanied by an array of exotic birds. Down on the ground, meanwhile, a primary school pupil with a fatal allergy to stings deliberately grabs hold of a bee.

It adds a metaphysical dimension to a story inspired by the case of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the man convicted of the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 and later released on compassionate grounds. In Marshall's play, a Lockerbie-style explosion leaves behind nothing but a plume of smoke and an imagined plume of feathers.

This flight of fantasy stands as a reminder that the imagination is all we have to make sense of such carnage. Without our facility for creative thought we could not piece together the forensic information, picture the victims' last moments and come up with a solution to end the violence.

That's why Ross Peters has reached such a moment of import. Played by Sylvester McCoy, he is a former teacher who has instilled in his pupils the joy of the imagination. Now, 20 years after the murder of his son, he finds imagination can help him no more. Having lived with his meaningless loss, he is unable to cope with the government's decision to release the terrorist. "Mercy is an act of the imagination," he says and it is an act he is unwilling to undertake.

As the debate around al-Megrahi still rages, Marshall has lit upon a necessary discussion about the long-term emotional consequences of such tragedies. The role is well played by McCoy, alternating between hang-dog gloom and chirpy stoicism, with excellent support from Gemma McElhinney and Finn Den Hertog. Andy Arnold's production is a short, thoughtful, sometimes beautiful study of the perils of "using death as a weapon".