BWW Reviews: GROUNDED Achieves Liftoff

Grounded

Written by George Brant, Directed by Lee Mikeska Gardner; Scenic Design, Steven Royal; Lighting Design, Wen-Ling Liao; Sound Design, Dewey C. Dellay; Production Design, Kathryn Lieber; Stage Manager, Dominique D. Burford; Assistant Stage Managers, Zach Tucker, Katherine Humbert; Assistant Director, Caitlin Lowans;Assistant to the Director, Alexander Pablo Roy

CAST: Celeste Oliva as The Pilot

Performances through March 22 at The Nora Theatre Company, Central Square Theater, 450 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA; Box Office 617-576-9278 or www.centralsquaretheater.org

Celeste Oliva gives a riveting, tour de force performance as The Pilot in George Brant's Grounded at the Nora Theatre Company, under the astute direction of Artistic Director Lee Mikeska Gardner. Alone onstage for approximately 75 minutes, Oliva is nonetheless surrounded by the audience on four sides and a circular bank of monitors overhead, and her alter ego is accompanied by the shadows of military-age males in a far-off country, and a loving husband and daughter at home. This symbolizes the dichotomy faced by the drone pilot who sits in front of a computer screen by day in a trailer in the Nevada desert and returns from the war to dinner with her family every night. It is a schizophrenic existence that takes a huge psychological toll.

This is not the first time that Boston area theatergoers have had the opportunity to view a play about the favored weapon du jour. Last June, New Repertory Theatre and the Boston Center for American Performance co-produced the world premiere of Walt McGough's Pattern of Life, a stark look at opposing sides of one life and death story, which challenged the audience to question their presumptions about right and wrong, and feel empathy for those who are caught in the crossfire. Grounded examines the life of one woman, prohibited from flying due to an unexpected pregnancy, and the impact that her reassignment to the unmanned aerial vehicle (drone) "chair force" has on her psyche and sense of self.

When the play opens, Oliva strides forcefully into the center of the stage, wearing a flight suit and dark aviator glasses, looking for all the world like a "top gun" on a mission. Her physical swagger and verbal patterns make it clear she is a take-no-prisoners type, and, as much as possible for a woman, one of the boys. She tells us who she is and speaks rhapsodically about going up into the blue. There is no fourth wall, yet there is a definite boundary between The Pilot and the audience - and the rest of the world, for that matter. She is of a particular breed and struggles to fit into the civilized world, yet a man finds his way into her heart; he "makes it through the gauntlet," as she says, and, before she knows it, she is flying upside down.

Oliva's character softens from her experiences as wife and mother, but she still puts on her flight suit and her pilot's persona everyday for her twelve-hour shift in the windowlesstrailer. At the end of the day, she takes off the suit, drives across the desert, has dinner with the family, and tries to live a semblance of a normal life before doing it all over again the next day. Oliva masterfully conveys both the routine and the disconnectedness, the tension and pressure of monitoring and being monitored, and the resulting anger and attitude issues. Making the situation more difficult is the isolation, the lack of a band of brothers, as it were, and the remove from the field of battle. As the play nears its denouement, there is a noticeable change in Oliva's face and body language as her gradual downward spiral speeds up.

Gardner paces the play and blocks Oliva's movements to capture the ebb and flow of The Pilot's existence, as well as to build the tension to reflect what she's going through as she hunts faceless terrorists halfway around the world. Wen-Ling Liao (lighting design), Dewey C. Dellay (sound design), and Steven Royal (scenic design) replicate the atmosphere in the trailer and make sure that we know what it feels like to be surrounded, in the spotlight, and watched. At some point, it starts to feel uncomfortable and all too real. However, it is a compelling theatrical experience and Grounded achieves liftoff thanks to Oliva's stunning performance.

Photo credit: A. R. Sinclair Photography (Celeste Oliva)

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