Fortune Theatre's production Grounded probes modern war’s destructive effects in an all too chilling way.
GROUNDED
Fortune Theatre
Saturday, August 13.
Reviewed by BARBARA FRAME
The Pilot, otherwise nameless, used to fly a fighter jet, raining bombs on minarets, buildings and people, powering away before the boom sounded.
Now she’s a drone pilot, working from a base in Nevada, tailing people thousands of miles away and getting a good look at them before pressing the button.
She finds it exhilarating.
For an hour and a-half, she tells the audience about her husband and daughter, their life in soulless Las Vegas and her daily drive across a desert not unlike the one she will watch on a screen when she gets to work.
Tough, proud of her expertise and superficially likeable, The Pilot is strikingly unconcerned about where the war she’s fighting is happening, what it’s about and whether her actions have any moral foundation.
In love with her own omnipotence, she routinely describes her victims as "guilty" without a second’s reflection on the nature of that guilt.
Claire Chitham, who plays her, traces her character’s path from blue-sky insouciance to meltdown with sensitivity and skill, and retains the audience’s attention throughout.
Grounded was written by American playwright George Brant, and has won several awards.
The Fortune’s production is directed by Jonathan Hendry.
Digital enrichment, designed by Otago Polytechnic’s Jon Wilson with the assistance of students Christopher Clapham and Joshua Hunter, increases visual interest and adds to the play’s creepy, menacing feel.
Intensely political, Grounded is the latest addition to the Fortune’s "True Grit" series.
Its themes of drone warfare and surveillance will resonate with people who saw the film Eye in the Sky earlier this year, and more recently The 5th Eye, which screened at the International Film Festival last week.
Chilling, timely, and, alas, entirely believable, it probes modern war’s destructive effects, not just on the obvious victims but also on those who conduct it, and ultimately on all of us.
• Grounded runs until September 3.
