Edinburgh Festival 2013

Grounded – review

Traverse, Edinburgh
4 out of 5 4
    • The Guardian,
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Once upon a time men went off to war in faraway places. Out of sight, out of mind. But what if Odysseus had returned for his supper each night, and brought the war to his family home? The nameless combat pilot in George Brant's gripping monologue does just that. But in an added layer of gender politics, the pilot is a woman. She is not just a top gun, she is "top shit", more one of the boys than the boys themselves.

  1. Grounded
  2. Traverse,
  3. Edinburgh
  1. Until 25 August
  2. Box office:
    0131-228 1404
  3. Venue website

But when she becomes pregnant, the pilot is grounded to protect the baby growing inside her, and, on returning to work, it's not to fly free in the romanticised blue sky. Rather, she sits in a trailer in the US desert, watching a grey screen and flying remote-controlled drones over other, faraway deserts.

For 12 hours a day she is an all-seeing, god-like eye on the undercarriage of a drone, ever poised to press a button and deliver summary execution to those spotted below. In the evening she goes home and watches her beloved daughter sleeping safely.

But is there a price to be paid for surveilling? Perhaps if you endlessly watch, you'll never stop seeing; maybe others have their eyes trained on you, too. The beauty of Brant's slippery script and Christopher Haydon's uncompromising production is the way they confront the audience: we are both witness and spying eye; we cannot escape being implicated in the debate about moral responsibility.

It is a searing piece of writing, and gets the blistering performance it deserves from Lucy Ellinson as a woman who spirals into confusion and guilt as the realisation dawns: while it's easy to act when you face no physical risk to yourself, you might compromise all you hold most dear.

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