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| Fasten your seatbelts | |||||||||
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| By Patrick Cornish | |||||||||
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| Octagon Theatre, UWA | |||||||||
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Occasionally - very rarely in fact - an airborne emergency becomes a disaster. Then we all hear about it. What in hell happened? What was it like in the driving seat as the last minutes slid away? It was like what you see in Charlie Victor Romeo, an authentic portrayal of six cockpit conversations from flights that turned to fright and worse. The words and actions, amounting to a "performance documentary", are all taken from cockpit voice recorders between 1985 (horrendous flaming disaster in Japan) and 1996 (take-off from Lima, Peru, to seabed, no survivors). This American drama, created in New York in 1999, is as gripping as anything you'll see at this year's Perth International Arts Festival. Fasten your seatbelts while we go through some reality checks here. "This play is a shocking, jarring, scaring thing," co-director Bob Berger has said. Check. It's a shock because it's real. Capt. Al Haynes, for example, was in charge on the afternoon in July 1989 when United Airlines Flight 232, a DC-10 whose rear explosion had exploded, slewed around the air above Sioux City, Iowa. The plane finally came down. Check. Haynes and nine other crew, as well as 138 passengers, survived. A flight attendant and 111 passengers did not. Haynes got a life, so to speak. He reported fully to the National Transportation Safety Board and often winced when people called him a hero for doing his sweating best in the sort of crisis the rest of us only have nightmares about. Last year he was in the audience for Charlie Victor Romeo. And wept. The set is simple, the acting is simply superb. Above the cockpit control desk the performers face the audience as if looking out the windows at ice, birds, terrain of which a faulty altimeter did not warn, or an ocean surface about to become their grave. The crew stare at dials that can be faulty, scan manufacturers' manuals that are supposed to guide when all goes awry. The actors, Patrick Daniels, Stuart Rudin, Irving Gregory, Michael Bruno, Dan Krumm, Audrey Crabtree and Julie Randall, appear in various combinations of crew hierarchy. They wear matching attire, give or take a gold stripe, but their personalities are not at all uniform. "Full Power!" yells one as his world slips away, literally. "Shall I tell the passengers to brace for landing?" asks a flight attendant courteously, jammed between duty-of-care and terror at the confusion at the sharp end of the aircraft. It's a new dimension of the phrase "cabin pressure", recorded for eternity in a black box. Above the stage a screen introduces each of the six episodes and rounds it off, an epitaph for human impertinence at seeking to travel aloft like the birds. One scene, however, conveys the "no casualties" message. This time the narrative speeds on a wing and a prayer but the prayer triumphs. You can't help thinking of September 11, especially for a gem of theatre that first soared on New York's Lower East Side, a few blocks from the World Trade Center. A performance scheduled for September 16 was postponed but the directors and actors soon felt justified in responding to public clamour for the show to resume. Charlie Victor Romeo shouldn't put anyone off flying. It's like the bumper sticker: "If you can read this, thank a teacher." If you or people you care about can be transported speedily and safely over continents and oceans, as millions are every day, then thank a pilot. | |||||||||
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