IThe setting is a frighteningly realistic, high-stakes drama about a honeymooning couple boarding a hijacked plane. We watch the plane's carrier on the ground in what they consider their final moments. Olly Forsyth's play thrillingly depicts the horror of a falling plane. The traverse stage, shaped like a boarding bridge, is raised at one end and opens into a gaping underground hole, with wide open skies outside. Sliding down a bridge means free falling from 40,000 feet above the ground.
Ray (Phil Dunster) and Sylvia (Anjana Vasan) take turns speaking directly to each other and to the audience, taking us from meeting to marriage to the plane crash and its emotional aftermath.
Anna Reid's set is inspired, as is the gruesome sound design by Paul Arditti, as the hijacker (Crazy Else) bursts into the cockpit and attempts to ease the captain's accelerator. An eerie silence completes as the engine stops. Then there's the sharpness of the nosedive, along with Simeon Miller's bright gangway lighting. It all feels incredibly real and dangerous. Daniel Raggett's direction is also crisp, providing both playfulness and menace throughout the drama.
But while the acting, especially Vasan's, is convincing, the couple is less convincing, as is the forced moral dilemma of Forsyth's screenplay. At first, like the aftermath of an avalanche of force majeure, the events on the plane seemed to cause distrust in their marriage back on the ground.
In flashbacks, we see how Sylvia thwarts the hijackers and becomes a hero in the media's attention. As such, Ray is intelligent and full of self-pity. Later, she becomes terrified and angry when she learns that the hijacker was so paranoid that he forgot about the murder and escaped without receiving a prison sentence.
As unbelievable as it seems, Ray's frustration with Sylvia's apparent PTSD makes him question whether the hijacker is good or bad, and whether the airline or the hijacker is to blame. Much about the couple is strangely lacking in nuance, right down to the moral discussion of their conflict. And if Sylvia has changed so much, will Ray be able to continue his marriage? Their respective reactions also seem too dichotomous. Ray buries the trauma and Sylvia becomes obsessed.
It's a shame that this production never gets aired, because Forsyth's central interest in what happens to those who avoid death in this dramatic way is so fascinating. So far, it's been a bumpy ride.
