Bombers' Row

A year after his last appearance (in Terra Haute) and some six years after his death by lethal injection, Timothy McVeigh is back at the Fringe.

It’s difficult to avoid the feeling that writers are playing into the hands of the unrepentant Oklahoma bomber, who appears in Bomber’s Row alongside 1993 World Trade Centre bomber Ramzi Yousef and Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski.

Contained in adjacent cages for an hour each day, the three shoot the breeze, amiably boasting, bickering and pondering the credentials of a new, non-terrorist arrival to the Supermax division. Kaczynski, in particular, comes across as quite a likeable sociopath.

While never less than entertaining, and at turns comic and chilling, Bomber’s Row is a disjointed sort of play. It opens with the arrival of a new prison barber, but her story is largely sidelined in favour of getting to know the infamous trio and newcomer Luis Posada (Alessandro Colla), who made me jump out of my seat when he suddenly hissed ‘Are you writing all of this down?’. As a result, the conclusion is not only unbelievable but it lacks impact, too.

The staging and performances are first-rate – unsurprisingly given the company’s excellent reputation – but ultimately the story feels a little like an afterthought, with the celebrity terrorists the main attraction here.