Lorilei - A Meditation on Loss

Published Thursday 24 February 2005 at 11:30 by Gerald Berkowitz

A woman whose six-year-old son was killed by a paedophile argues against the death penalty for the murderer. The story is true, the woman exists and the script is made up primarily of her own words, spoken by an actress. Tom Wright’s play wears its political agenda openly, with this production sponsored by the anti-capital punishment charity Reprieve. But its strength comes from the purely personal and unpolitical emotional journey it depicts.

Lorelei Guillory tells, in words taken from a BBC interview, how a mother’s immediate pain and rage evolved over a period of years into the conviction that her son’s murderer should not be executed. Her own experience of what she calls the disease of alcoholism and drug abuse leads her to an understanding of his mental illness, her mothers’ love recognises his humanity and, while she makes no broad political judgement, she becomes convinced that killing this particular man would be wrong.

The undeniable authenticity of the experience gives it great dramatic power and the only weak moments in the script come when the author moves away from Lorelei’s voice to interpolate material from trial documents. Director Nicholas Harrington wisely does not attempt to embellish the raw material, guiding actress Anna Galvin to sit almost motionless at a table, narrating her tale in the flattened tones of one whose emotions have been exhausted by visiting too many hells, with the only visual distraction being the brief and silent appearance of Gareth Farley as the murderer.