First performed at the Gate Theatre in Notting Hill in 2013, George Brant’s Grounded returns with its original star Lucy Ellinson for a month-long run as part of the theatre’s Resist! season. Directed by Christopher Haydon, the production inspires rebellion and revolution and celebrates Haydon’s final season as Artistic Director of the Gate Theatre.

Ellinson plays an American F16 fighter pilot. On leave from her service in the war in Iraq she meets Eric and falls pregnant. No longer able to fly, she becomes ‘grounded’ (a “pilot’s nightmare”) and upon returning from maternity leave is reassigned to combat in the ‘Chair Force’ as a drone pilot. Flying remote-control drones over the Middle East from a trailer in Las Vegas, she conducts personality strikes in twelve-hour shifts. Slowly, her days of stalking terrorists over Middle-Eastern deserts begin to encroach on her nightly duties as a mother and wife, until the two worlds can no longer be separated.

Performed as a monologue, Ellinson commands Brant’s script with a powerful mastery that begins as soon as the house is open to its audience. As The Pilot, she stands feet hip-width apart with a slight bend at the knee. She is dressed in a US Air Force military flight suit, her hands wrapped around a web belt. Her trousers are tucked in to lace-up combat boots and a pilot’s qualification badge winks from her left collarbone. The Pilot stands within a translucent cube, and the audience look in on her from three sides, separated by a grey gauze. The floor of the stage beneath the Pilot glares pea-green and a bottle of Pepsi Max sits downstage right, partly drunk. ‘Omen’ by The Prodigy reverberates deep within the chest, and the theatre shudders under the Big Beat of the drum and bass as if it were about to take flight.

Oliver Townsend’s design creates an unsettling environment, and lighting designer Mark Howland works well to add to this. Sound designer Tom Gibbons creates a soundscape that reinforces The Pilot’s dialogue, which adds to the established sense of claustrophobia. A whispered “Boom” of a distant bomb is accompanied by the sound of an explosion, just as her daughter Samantha’s toy ponies have their own theme tune.

Throughout the play, the audience are guided through the world of The Pilot and her Reaper drone. The Pilot watches the movements of her drone through a camera that sits in its belly, and watches a screen that shows a grey world twelve hours ahead and with a 1.2 second delay. The grey gauze appears to be a manifestation of this world that she carries everywhere. As the action continues, the gauze no longer seems diaphanous, but becomes heavy and prison-like. Indeed, the production elements seem to be aligned with the innermost self of The Pilot and underline changes in her personality. Trapped within Townsend’s perfect cage, The Pilot is not stimulated and becomes progressively more detached. In narrative transitions she reaches out and touches the gauze that separates her world from the world of the audience, but is unable to make contact. Lacking both motion and emotion, the colour grey renders the audience helpless as they watch her choke on her never-ending mission.

Seventy-minutes flies by and the green light in the floor explodes and then dissolves.

“Boom”.

Grounded is playing at the Gate Theatre until March 18. 

Photo: Iona Firouzabadi