The play is set in 1995, seven years on from the tragedy. Drawing on real events, the play tells the story of an American couple, Madeline and Bill, who lost their only son in the disaster. Their son was sitting directly over the bomb and no body was ever found - their sense of grief is understandably still overwhelming.

The women of Lockerbie are also still struggling with the memory of what happened on Wednesday 21st December 1988. In deciding to wash and return the clothes of the victims to their families, they have desperately latched on to a way to turn the horror and terror of that night into something positive. However, with the investigation into the crash now completed, the American government have decided to burn the remains of the victims and have sent a man from the State Department to oversee the job.

Breevoort's play makes use of the conventions of Greek tragedy and especially that of Euripides' Trojan Women. This approach works in part; it highlights the terrible suffering of the women and conveys the wandering madness of Madeline who searches the hills for any tiny fragment left of her son. The women themselves become a Greek chorus, their music a lament. What it doesn't quite manage is to recapture the full power of what the Trojan Women stood for - a revelatory anti-war message delivered by women to a mainly male audience.

Inevitably play cannot help but carry resonance from more recent horrors. The Women Of Lockerbie was completed long before the tragedy of September 11th and yet there are echoes here of that dreadful day and its aftermath.

Each character in turn reveals the events that took place on the day of the crash and the way it affected them. The little details resonate the most: the woman who returns from walking her dog to find the roof of her house gone and filled with bodies; the woman who discovered body parts in her garden; the mother who, while making a pie, hears of her son's death.

The acting throughout is superb and never mawkish, although special mention needs to be made for Colette O'Neil who, as Olive Allison, leads the women of Lockerbie in their fight against the man from the State Department. Portraying her as a solid Scottish woman in sensible shoes and tweeds makes her revelation half way through the play all the more shocking and heartbreaking.

Sam Dowson's set design is particularly clever, with a series of stairs linking the stage with the gallery, representing the hills over which the grieving Madeline roams. On the stage a number of slots have been cut into the floor and water runs through them, a constant reminder of the mission these women have set for themselves.

This is a thought provoking and thoroughly affecting piece of theatre, rendered all the more relevant by recent events. Subtle yet powerful, it allows the audience the necessary time and space to think about the nature of grief.

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