Review: GROUNDED Is Taut And Focused At The Alley Theatre

GROUNDED, by George Brandt, is a one-woman play about the life of a pilot who has been, well, grounded. When she hooks up with a guy who digs a woman in uniform and becomes pregnant, she has to say goodbye to planes, at least for a while. Instead of flying "out there", in the vast blueness of sky, she is relegated to the "chair force", where she commandeers UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles), or drones. The Pilot is a character that can drive a one-woman show for 85 minutes. She's a passionate, determined, irreverent, thrill seeker. She swaggers, she brags, she cusses not a little. And yes, she's a she, a heterosexual woman, no less, who feels the need for exhilaration via testosterone-fueled missions into "the blue" where she commands her F15, affectionately referred to as "Tiger". (Tiger happens to be female, too, and would be a fitting moniker for our pilot, by the way.)

It would be tempting to think she has it all; A beta husband and beautiful baby daughter to come home to at night and an active career during the day. But she misses flying with the deep-rooted ache of a natural born pilot, and it turns out that killing people from a remote location is just as psychologically damaging as doing it in the same zip code. The Pilot is torn by the universal struggle of balance that so many women feel. When venting about the roles she plays in her own life she says, "I was born for this, but born for that, too." Who hasn't felt that way at some point in their lives? Bunch makes the struggle real and we ache for the character as we see her trying to manage some kind of fulfillment in the middle of it all.

Directed by Jackson Gay, GROUNDED is an assured and focused production at the Alley Theatre. Leading lady Elizabeth Bunch is nothing if not versatile. The actor has successfully played so many vastly different characters over the course of her 10-year career at the Alley, and the role of The Pilot (the character doesn't have a real name) is an impressive addition to her body of work. Many great acting teachers have said to play a part well you must understand how your character thinks. This is one of Bunch's strengths; she gets into the minds of the people she plays and renders them real. Even if you don't love the main character- maybe she a little cocksure, a little brash, a little loud- the story is strong and whole and The Pilot is a reliable and honest storyteller.

GROUNDED is an important, valid story for our time. Though intrigued by drones in general, George Brandt was especially interested in the fact that PTSD rates are as high for drone pilots as for regular pilots. The main purpose of drones is to keep our soldiers safe while they are out on missions, but it turns out that PTSD is pervasive no matter where you are when you're "pressing the button". A pilot may feel physically safe when operating a drone, but the mental and emotional ramifications of war are still insidious. Brandt's written portrayal of The Pilot's slide into emotional and mental turmoil is nuanced and deep. It may be that the strength of this play is based on the driving balance between humanistic dichotomies: hard and soft, the emotional and the mental, vulnerability and power. No one is all strength and bravado, and GROUNDED honors the humanity in all of us.

Photo Credit: Lynn Lane

For Tickets To GROUNDED: https://www.alleytheatre.org/plays/production-detail/grounded

GROUNDED Will be presented at the Alley Theatre from March 25 through April 17th.

For Mature audiences only.