Charlotte Bailey reviews Charlie Victor Romeo
at Udderbelly’s Pasture, Edinburgh
Edinburgh Festival 2008 homepage“We declare an emergency. We have no controls. We’re stalling…”
These
were the last words of the pilot of Aeroperu Flight 663 to Lima on 2
October 1996 before it crashed, leaving no survivors. In the most
intense and harrowing 75 minutes you may ever experience in a theatre,
Charlie Victor Romeo re-enacts the black-box transcripts of the crew of
six flights which have fallen into states of emergency. The action is centred solely on a mock-up of a
plane’s cockpit and the exchanges between the pilot and his crew.
Words, broken only by noises of a plane in distress, drive the suspense
of this production and succeed in mesmerising the audience until you
are unable to drag your eyes away from the building drama. Disaster
is inevitable – it’s waiting for it to strike which is excruciating.
Planes and passengers who were once only names and numbers in a news
story come alive through the transcripts and give us unsettling access
to the real experiences of these airline emergencies. The
tension is tangible and audible in the gasps of the audience
throughout. When details of the flight and the number of survivors
flash up after the stage has blackened, it serves as a final death
knell, which may very well convince you never to fly again.
Until Aug 25; tickets: 0844 545 8252 | 
