By Richard Nilsen
The Arizona Republic
April 30, 2002 12:00:00

Charlie Victor Romeo is white-knuckle theater.

It is the most intense 75 minutes I've ever spent in a theater. If you thought Terminator, as a movie, was relentless, you haven't yet learned the meaning of the word. As theater, Charlie Victor Romeo is nearly unendurable suspense.

The title is military-speak for CVR, or cockpit voice recorder, and the play is constructed from verbatim transcripts of six "black box" recordings from air disasters.

The set is a simplified airplane cockpit, and a group of eight actors, taking turns as pilots, flight engineers and flight attendants, act out the dramas taking place as airplanes turn dangerous.

This is not theater as "a little song, a little dance, a little hot-cha-cha." It is gripping in ways you cannot imagine.

It has no characters, no continuous plot. No names are used, and while there are heroes, there are no John Waynes. These pilots are the kind of heroes who do difficult things against impossible odds.

One of the things that adds to the suspense is that not every disaster acted out is fatal, or fatal to all passengers. You don't know beforehand how any scenario will turn out. Yet, there is the specter of death behind each episode - and not stage death, but real death. These vignettes are not fiction.

The evening was put together by New York's Collective: Unconscious theater, and was given the 2000 New York Drama Desk award for "Best Unique Theatrical Experience."

"Unique" is the right word.

And the climax of the presentation is given over to one of the most famous air disasters: United Airlines Flight 232, which, in 1989, lost its hydraulic power when one of its engines shattered in midflight. The crew managed to keep the plane flying with no actual controls and only a few ad-hoc inventions to try out.

It is one of the real examples of heroism, and you get to see it played out in the cockpit as the crew attempts to land an unflyable plane at Sioux City, Iowa.

This is not conventional theater, but it is powerfully gripping and shouldn't be missed.

Reach the reporter at

(602) 444-8823.