205.
GROUNDED
George
Brant’s GROUNDED, one of the most solidly written and well-acted solo pieces of
the current season, squeezed me tightly in its grip from beginning to end
during its 70 minutes of stage time at the intimate Walkerspace on Walker
Street. GROUNDED won the 2012 Smith Prize, given to an outstanding play
focusing on American politics. Before arriving in New York, it was performed at
the Edinburgh Fringe Festival (winning a Fringe First Award), in London, and at
several American cities.
Hannah Cabell. Photo: Rob Strong.
An awesome Hannah Cabell plays an unnamed Air Force major, an ace female fighter
pilot, who tells, in as direct and no b.s. a fashion as possible, the story
of her deployment in the Middle East, her love of combat flying her beloved "Tiger" in “the blue,” and
of the pregnancy that placed her on leave until she was ready to
return to active duty. When she did, she was assigned to an overly air-conditioned, windowless
trailer on a base an hour outside of Las Vegas, thereby going from one desert to
another, where her job in the much-derided "chairforce" was to operate a Reaper drone
searching for military-age men on the screen in places they didn't belong, and
to liquidate them. “Boom,” she says calmly after each kill. Then, things
begin to go sour.
The trim and determined-looking Ms.
Cabell, wearing a flight uniform, stands almost throughout in the same spot on
a nearly bare, black and gray stage—subtly designed by Arnulfo Maldonado with little more
than a swoosh-like stripe across the back wall—much like a soldier being debriefed. Her hair is short and boyish, and her voice strong and
firm, giving her a rather butch affect at first, although we discover quickly
enough that her appetite is thoroughly hetero. Eric, the civilian hardware store clerk who gets her pregnant
and marries her, is a loving husband and a good father to their little girl,
Samantha. He gets a job as a blackjack dealer in a Las Vegas hotel referred to as “the
pyramid” (which must be the Luxor), while she commutes by car to her job at the base, where she stares at a gray HD screen (unlike the blue of the
sky she adores) 12 hours a day, 7 days a week. Of course, the couple’s lives
are seriously affected by the odd hours each keeps, which cuts into the time
they can be together or spend with Sam. The pilot ticks off how she would spend long days at the base,
drive home, have sex, watch TV, go to sleep, and then wake the next day to do
it over again. She realizes her good fortune at being able to go to war every
day and then come home at night, with the "threat of death" removed, but, eventually, carrying out her daily military
tasks and trying to live as normal a family life as she can under the
circumstances proves more stressful than expected. Unintended
consequences ensue.
Hannah Cabell. Photo: Rob Strong.
It takes some time for this flyer to
adjust to her situation of remotely operating an $11 million piece of equipment as part of a
team instead of as piloting an F-11 jet on her own. The job of surveilling the
desert sky (country not specified) can be mind-numbingly boring, especially for someone still enthralled by the thrill of flying; her adrenaline pumps only at those moments when, assuming the role of judge, jury, and executioner, she takes pleasure in casually knocking off--"boom"--the occasional military-age men she spots. "I am God," she says of herself. But when she’s ordered to hunt down
and destroy the number 2 man on the enemy list, making absolutely sure it’s him
before taking action, the tension mounts as, hour by hour, she tracks the car
in which he’s thought to be traveling through the desert. When the target, whom she's demonized the "One-Eyed Prophet," finally
emerges—after so long that she speculates he must be peeing into a bottle—she’s ordered to take him out,
but, given her state of mind at the moment, and the appearance on the screen of the man's little girl, this turns out not to be so easy after all. The kinds of trauma experienced by military personnel after coming home clearly can take many forms.
As the pilot stands before us, determinedly
relating her story, we become sucked into the vortex of her daily life, work, and mental
attitudes, something few of us know much about. But,
beyond this fascinating look at an unusual military role, she leads us into
speculation about the ubiquity of surveillance in our lives, where there’s
always an eye in the sky observing us. Her husband is constantly being watched, of
course, when he’s on the casino floor, just as she is continually watching the
desert for signs of suspicious activity while herself being scrutinized by
her superiors. She’s unable to take her child to the mall without looking for
the cameras, and, in an amusing moment, imagines that any such cameras
in the dressing rooms are transmitting their images to India. She can
practically see one of the viewers coming to America, going to the dressing room,
and waving to friends back home.
Mr. Brant’s language is taut, colorful,
and authentic-sounding, evoking a very believable world in which military and
domestic concerns intermingle, and Ms. Cabell nails every word with psychological
honesty and emotional truth. She's thoroughly convincing as a female pilot,
carrying herself with just the right amount of professional bravado and forthrightness but displaying
an affecting sense of vulnerability when her two worlds come crashing together.
GROUNDED, produced by Page 73, is
greatly enhanced by the nuanced lighting of Garin Marschall and the finely
calibrated sound design of Jane Shaw. Director Ken Rus Schmoll has done an
excellent job of helping Ms. Cabell capture all the shifting tones of the pilot’s
monologue. The play takes its title from what happens to its protagonist after the climactic scene; however,
it's also correct to say that, despite the somewhat questionable ending, this play is thoroughly grounded.
