Theater review: 'CVR' is a grab-you-by-the-throat ride

When, as a national news correspondent for the New York Times, I interviewed distraught relatives of some of the people who perished in a 1994 plane crash over Roselawn, Ind., I could not have imagined that one day I might witness the final moments in the cockpit of that doomed plane.

Thanks to the New York theater troupe Collective: Unconscious, we can all see the flushed faces, white knuckles and frantic end of that plane.

The theater troupe has taken the black-box recordings of six aviation disasters since 1985 -- with nearly 800 total fatalities -- and dryly, skillfully re-created the confusion, the terror and even some of the gallows humor of people on the edge of catastrophe.

With its rumbling airplane noise and its desperate voices often followed by shocking quiet, the show "CharlieVictorRomeo" grabs you by the throat. It registers in your heart and consciousness, powerfully presenting disquieting experiences in the most nonsensational way.

The tone of the show, which opened Thursday at the Guthrie Lab in Minneapolis, is matter-of-fact. But it's really a matter of art and heart.

"CVR" is reality theater. Unlike the reality TV shows in which people vie for prizes in neo-primitivistic settings, this show is about losing everything.

Created by actor-performers Irving Gregory, Bob Berger and Patrick Daniels, "CVR" is enacted in a way that reveals harrowing truths. The flight crews, as presented here, are flat-voiced workaday people. They have little of the magnetism of Tom Cruise in "Top Gun." Their banter is of the most obvious type. These ordinary people are made extraordinary by the lift of airplanes and by their circumstances.

The seven-member cast aptly projects the confident, technical chatter of pilots and the perfunctory dryness of flight attendants, all to a soundtrack of plane engines and muffled, paper-tearing communications.

Despite its authentic feel, and the specific locales and circumstances of the incidents -- whether the 1985 crash of a Japan Airlines flight or the 1996 ocean downing of Aeroperu Airlines Flight 603 -- "CVR" is more broadly a show about how people work and communicate under stress. For example, the calmer pilots here are best able to cope with emergencies, and even find a way out, versus the frantic, panicky pilots.

One could imagine "CVR" being used as a training film for professionals outside of aviation, such as paramedics or emergency room doctors.

There's an overarching lesson for everyone, however, in the importance of keeping your head in moments of terror and treasuring the small moments of grace in this life.

-- Rohan Preston is at rpreston@startribune.com .