Grounded at the Arnolfini in Bristol - Review
Posted on: 2015-01-29
Our rating:
George Brant's Grounded is a brisk, gruelling piece of intense dialogue theatre, a highly energised analysis of drone warfare and an increasingly digitised society. Intelligent, articulate, vital and thought-provoking.
George Brant's Grounded is a brisk, gruelling piece of intense dialogue theatre, a highly energised analysis of drone warfare and the way in which our lives are being increasingly subsumed by an almost out-of-control digitised delirium.
Performing in a grey gauze cube, Lucy Ellinson is an American F16 fighter pilot known only as The Pilot. She's fiery, she brash, she's a no-nonsense kind of girl, and talks of even general everyday life in some form of military vocabulary.
After meeting Eric, she falls in love and gets pregnant, but when she has to return to work, her military role dramatically shifts. No longer in the front line of combat she's guided into what she calls "the chair force" , a Las Vegas-based team controlling an unmanned drone. Job done, she drives home across the desert to her husband and daughter, day in, day out.
On the surface you'd imagine that would be a good thing, getting to spend more time with her family and no longer thrust into life-threatening war scenarios. But 21st century warfare presents a more complex, more challenging dilemma for The Pilot, and it becomes a more perplexing question of morals and ethics, rights and wrongs, life and death. Removed from real life, physical battle zones, operating the drone to target and annihilate lives becomes more like some detached and twisted form of computer gaming.
Brant's play captures the intensity, anger, confusion and despair of The Pilot's existence, effectively sidelined from a real life adrenaline-pumping physical war to a soulless digitised, joystick-operated desk job.
And things start to slowly unravel, her marriage crumbles, her sex life wanes, and there's the deeper, more apposite implication that she's just becoming something of a drone herself, dislocated from her own existence. She's becoming part of a digitised collective, an emotionless hive mind somewhat deprived of free will and independence.
It's a fast-paced, feverish tour-de-force of a performance by Ellinson in her one-way cell, infused with a myriad of emotions of hyperactive, fun-loving, exasperated, confused and disillusioned. Her mile-a-minute dialogue does render the odd word or line unintelligible, but that's a minor flaw in an otherwise outstanding play in which the intensity is heightened by being performed in the Arnolfini's intimate studio theatre.
Director Christopher Haydon keeps things tight and slick, and Oliver Townsend's design - pounding music, strobing lights, perfectly synched to the on-stage action - is as impressive as it is exhilarating.
Grounded is a compelling piece of contemporary theatre; intelligent, articulate, vital and thought-provoking.
4.5/5
Reviewed by Jamie Caddick for 365Bristol - the leading events and entertainment website for Bristol
Grounded plays at the Arnolfini until Saturday 31 January 2015. There are still tickets available for all performances from Bristol Old Vic Box Office in person or on 0117 987 7877. After 7pm (or 2pm for matinee performances) tickets will be available from Arnolfini and can only be bought with cash.
Article by:
Born and raised in the suburbs of Swansea, Jimmy moved to Bristol back in 2004 to attend university. Passionate about live music, sport, science and nature, he can usually be found walking his cocker spaniel Baxter at any number of green spots around the city. Call James on 078 9999 3534 or email Editor@365Bristol.com.
