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Phil Hopkins
Group Travel Editor & Theatre Correspondent
@philhopkinsuk
8:30 AM 24th October 2014
arts

Grounded: Thought Provoking But Overly Testosterone

 
Grounded is a short play - about 80 minutes - but is intense and requires your undivided concentration if you are to stay with its controversial themes.

George Brant's work plays across the world and, this time, it was Gate Theatre's opportunity to dish up their version of his award winning script at the West Yorkshire Playhouse.

Lucy Ellinson held the stage seamlessly as a US Top Gun whose unexpected pregnancy ends her career as a fighter pilot, until she is reassigned to operate military drones from a windowless trailer outside Las Vegas.

When it first hit the scene in 2013 the critics raved about Grounded calling it a 'must see' and a 'play for our time' but, for me, whilst it certainly explored some interesting themes, it all felt a bit like watching Top Gun on steroids.

The excessively macho characterisation left me momentarily wondering whether such pilots actually existed, rather than keeping my focus on the themes - female pilots and pregnancy, automated warfare, the conflicts of motherhood and surveillance society.

Right now Grounded is a play that fits neatly into the current affairs agenda as it explores the conflicts of its main protagonist, 'The Pilot'. As Lucy Ellinson raves about the joy of flying in 'the blue', we also begin to hear about America's 'Chairforce', a side swipe at the US Air Force's teams of 'drone pilots', employed to fly and deliver their deadly loads to targets thousands of miles away.

As the pressure to track a high-profile target mounts, the boundaries begin to blur between the Nevada desert in which she lives and the one she patrols half a world away, until The Pilot goes into meltdown, convinces herself that she is about to blow her own daughter away and aborts her mission. A court martial and jail follows.

We often hear about teenagers who disappear into the darkness of their bedrooms to spend hours working their way through various levels of favourite gaming programs. Every now and then the news reports a mass shooting connected to a youngster and, for a moment, you wonder whether the two were connected.

It is the same with Grounded. Someone, somewhere flies a drone and then gets into a car to drive home at the end of the day, via the local burger joint. Does that job desensitise war and, indeed, the people running it?

You fly your mission, someone else takes over when your shift ends, then you leave the air force base, assuming you'd been able to find a parking spot, and head off home to your nearest and dearest; nice day at the office darling?

Grounded is a 'now' play. It will date at some point as society progresses, in the same way that Starsky and Hutch looks out of sync when you see a typewriter in the background. But, the base of the script, its themes, will remain hugely relevant whilst ever we have a conscience and a desire to preserve the very essence of humanity, man's soul. George Brant wanted to make us think, I think he did!

Until tomorrow.

Grounded
West Yorkshire Playhouse
7.45pm