The Unicorn’s Grounded doesn’t quite have it all
Pilot projects a rock star’s hubris and feels herself “a god” when she flies fast and high on military missions. Boom! she exclaims in Grounded, a one-woman show at the Unicorn Theatre. The floor of this production’s round stage spins, and Pilot appears to wind up and take off. This is me! This is me! she repeats, the words foreshadowing later, darker developments. High in the sky and high on herself, she seems to get off on dropping ordnance. Boom!
It’s an elite club, that of the fighter pilot, and it’s mostly made up of men. Pilot (Carla Noack) is one of the guys — until she meets a civilian in a Wyoming bar while on leave and her bravado turns him on. Soon after their tryst comes morning sickness during bombing runs. Knowing she must be grounded, she reports the pregnancy-test results to her commanding officer and heads stateside.
She was born to fly — her plane “cradles” her — but Pilot knows she was also born to be a mother. Playwright George Brant’s exploration of the working woman facing domestic life plays with a different set of conflicting roles: wartime fighter vs. mother.
Reassigned to the Nevada desert, Pilot trains to fly drone missions. Staring at a gray screen instead of soaring into blue sky, she feels like part of a “typing pool.” Only the occasional order to unleash a drone’s weaponry breaks the monotony of hours and days of surveillance, even as it transforms her into a different kind of god, one who keeps a close watch on the carnage she wreaks. Pilot engages in battle by day yet returns home to her family at night (shifts effectively abetted by Alex Perry’s lighting design). The distinction between warrior and wife blurs, and the flight suit that first attracted that civilian has instead become an emblem of her work: war (costume design by Shannon Smith-Regnier).
Noack’s Pilot doesn’t just drive this play but personifies Brant’s story about the place of technology in modern warfare and daily life. A one-act monologue directed by Cynthia Levin, this solo work is an affecting piece. At times, Noack delivers her lines as though reciting poetry. The stage is bare, but she fills the space, making Pilot’s thoughts and fears palpable.
The Unicorn has reconfigured the Jerome Stage as in-the-round (set design by Gary Mosby), with two walkways extending into seats. Pilot is never far away, and this intimacy with the audience mirrors the closeness of her war.
But Grounded feels a little contrived, with an underlying, perhaps unintended message: that women may want to be like men or equal to them but ultimately can’t because motherhood defines them, by its nature making them too caring and by necessity stalling their careers. This perspective — a woman in the cross hairs of wartime morality — fascinates, and we are moved by this actor’s portrayal. But Brant’s setup also feels too made-to-order, and it isn’t clear whether Pilot stands in for all the workers operating our surveillance state, or just the women.
