Sam Walton, Ben Chinn & Christiann Koop in Charlie Victor Romeo

Charlie Victor Romeo
by William Stevenson

If you're already afraid of flying, Charlie Victor Romeo isn't the show for you. And if you're not already afraid, you probably won't want to board a plane for a while after seeing it. That's because this production by the Collective: Unconscious Theater at P.S. 122 recreates actual airline emergencies, using Black Box recordings as the source material. It's a gripping, edge-of-your-seat ride that is not for the faint of heart.

Appropriately enough, the cockpit docudrama opens with two flight attendants (Christiaan Koop and Debbie Troché) going over safety procedures. Naturally, this includes turning off all cell phones, which makes the announcement suitable for a theater as well as a plane. Since safety announcements are usually made on video screens nowadays, just seeing a live demonstration makes one nostalgic for the good old days of flying (when one could expect more than a bag of pretzels during a three-hour flight).

The introduction is the only part of the play that will make anyone nostalgic for flying, however. The rest of the tension-filled show consists of six real-life cockpit emergencies from the 1980s and '90s. Not all of the incidents ended tragically: They range from no fatalities to no survivors. At the beginning of each recreation, there's a slide announcing the flight number, location and the problem encountered by the flight crew. When the second scene opened with the word "icing" on the screen, a man in my row said, "Uh-oh."

It's a grim guessing game, trying to figure out if the pilots will be able to overcome mechanical problems or bad weather and land safely. What's surprising is how cool and professional the pilots generally remained under such frightening circumstances. During one particularly harrowing emergency on an AeroPeru Airlines flight near Lima, Peru, the co-pilot frantically reads the manual to figure out what to do when the autopilot doesn't work. While the play gives one newfound appreciation for the skills of pilots, it doesn't make one feel too confident about airplanes, since so many things can go wrong.

The crises depicted here include everything from catastrophic ruptures to multiple bird strikes. The pilots use a number of technical terms: altimeters, rudder ratios, Mach trim, and the like. But, as in Tom Stoppard's intellectually dense Jumpers, it doesn't matter if you don't know what everything means. The program includes handy synopses of the six incidents, clarifying what went wrong as well as what the crew did correctly and incorrectly to solve the problems.

Apparently, pilots and others in the aviation industry have made up a third of the audiences for this "theatrical documentary," which premiered in fall 1999, played the 2000 New York Fringe Festival, and has toured extensively since then. The U.S. Air Force filmed Charlie Victor Romeo--code for Cockpit Voice Recording--for use as a training video.

The eight-person cast includes the director, Irving Gregory, who is a co-creator and co-producer as well. Fellow cast member Patrick Daniels is also a co-creator and co-producer, and Bob Berger is the third co-creator and co-producer. The actors, playing multiple roles, are believable as pilots, co-pilots, and stewardesses. Gregory's direction is taut, making each scene suspenseful without feeling exploitative.

The real star of the production, however, is Jamie Mereness' vivid, frighteningly realistic sound design, which deservedly won a Fringe Festival award. From engine rumblings to horrific crashes, the sound makes it seem as though the traumatic incidents are happening all over again. Bill Ballou and Cecile Boucher's design of the cockpit is similarly convincing, and Matthew Eggleton's lighting is effective, too.

Experiencing real-life airline emergencies isn't for everyone. But for those who can stomach it, Charlie Victor Romeo offers 90 minutes of aeronautical thrills and chills.

Charlie Victor Romeo
Created by Bob Berger, Patrick Daniels and Irving Gregory
Directed by Irving Gregory
P.S. 122