Small Acts of Love – Citizens Theatre, Glasgow

The bombing of Pan Am 103 on December 21st claimed the lives of all 259 passengers, and 11 more in and around the small town of Lockerbie, over which it disintegrated. Frances Poet and Ricky Ross open their musical in that small Scottish Borders town in the hours before the catastrophe, the residents singing a nuanced ode to their ordinary home whilst putting up decorations.

At first, the story is told through the eyes of Police Officer Colin Dorrance (Ewan Donald), prompted to recall that fateful night by his teenage daughter Claire (Holly Howden Gilchrist), one of two Lockerbie Scholars selected for a year at Syracuse University in 2012.

Confronted with burning wreckage, obliterated housing, traumatised residents, and bodies scattered across the town and surrounding countryside, it’s hard to imagine a more challenging induction for the freshly minted 18-year-old constable.

Director Dominic Hill sets a helter-skelter pace, barreling Dorrance and the audience, into the heart of the disaster. The sheer scale of the murder scene defies staging, so the musical wisely focuses on individual horrors, be it farmers protecting infant corpses from foxes, or the boy who lost his entire family when their home was obliterated by debris. The inevitable journey into horror slows to regard these bleak vignettes, attended by a mournful wail from the cast.

“Dominic Hill sets a helter-skelter pace, barreling Dorrance and the audience, into the heart of the disaster. The sheer scale of the murder scene defies staging, so the musical wisely focuses on individual horrors…”

At the centre of it all, Parish Priest Father Keegans (Robert Jack) stumbles beneath the weight of expectations, hiding from the cameras, and desperate for this particular cup of suffering to be taken away from him. Jack’s undeniably powerful performance provides much of the dramatic weight needed to keep the musical grounded. Blythe Duff also impresses as Moira Shearer, one of the volunteer ‘laundry ladies’ who meticulously cleaned and identified surviving clothing and items for return to their families.

**Ensemble, Small Acts of Love, Citizens Theatre 2025, Credit Mihaela Bodlovic**

Elsewhere, however, in making such a studious attempt to avoid melodrama, Small Acts of Love can – occasionally – feel quite procedural. There are few tears in either past or present; grief is more often spoken of than embodied. Not all of the 40 characters embodied by this fine 14-strong cast should be blubbering messes, of course, but shock, anger and contemplation are only part of the grief equation. A devastated cry of ‘My Baby!’ into a darkened auditorium when the news reaches home is powerful, but it’s not enough.

Ross’s songbook, and a sharp on-stage band led by Gavin Whitworth, does inject some of the needed emotion here and there, but the production’s emotional heft is decidedly intermittent. One person keeping company with a body in lieu of absent family offers a profoundly human moment, and poignancy to a musical intro to some of the passenger-victims; but the rather wordy reactions of their surviving loved-ones lacks in pathos.

Small Acts of Love, however, does not need Naomi Stirrat’s rather annoying local journalist for comic relief, or a knowing wink to Duff’s previous incarnation as a TV detective. Conversely said frustrating journo does provide a useful means by which Poet can highlight the touching decades’ long devotion of one posthumous adoptive guardian, and unite them with the bereaved mother of ‘their girl’. Small Acts of Love may not devastate, but it’s still very, very touching.

“…in making such a studious attempt to avoid melodrama, Small Acts of Love can sometimes feel quite procedural.”

The core idea is a beautiful one, nevertheless, and in the show’s strongest number, ‘Small Acts of Love,‘ Ross offers a memorable and poignant ode to the people of Lockerbie, and their myriad affectionate, loving acts for both the dead and their bereaved. Able only to ‘give what they know to give’, they did, and the musical certainly captures the heartbreak and wonder of unlooked-for restorations of journals, recordings and clothing to the bereaved.

Come the second act, the show moves into more life-affirming territory, shifting into the future, and focusing on the friendships which emerged between Lockerbie residents and the mostly American bereaved families. What begins as a flurry of local volunteer-facilitated pilgrimages to the landing places of loved ones’ bodies gives way to lifelong associations, university programmes, and even a little romance.

Poet’s weaving of heart-warming, gently comic and more maudlin moments deftly avoids the least hint of mawkishness. There’s substance to the hope she, Ross and Hill have found in the events following the worst ever terror attack on British soil.

If Small Acts of Love were less shy of the abject sorrow attending its origins, this light would shine brighter, but it’s still a first-class production, and a welcome reminder of the power of simple human kindness.

All images: Mihaela Bodlovic