Friday, January 17, 2014

205. Review of GROUNDED (January 15, 2014)


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.
 
 
Hannah Cabell. Photo: Rob Strong.

            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.