There’s good news and bad news about Borderlands Theater’s latest, “Grounded.”
The bad news first: This weekend is your last chance to catch the play.
The good news: Just about everything about the production of the new work by George Brant.
The play is poetic, powerful and poignant. Alida Holguín Gunn, who plays Pilot, the lone character in the play, embodied this woman who struggles with her roles as a wife, mother, and top-notch fighter pilot.
Director Barclay Goldsmith gave the 80-minute piece room to breathe and turned out a low-key production, which allowed the light to shine directly on where it should: the character and the story.
Gunn’s Pilot has a tough exterior with terrific pride in making her way in a male-dominated world, that of an Air Force fighter pilot. Gunn mesmerizes us as she takes us through a leave where she meets a man, becomes pregnant, leaves the Air Force, marries, longs for the thrill and the prestige of flying planes once again , re-enlists, and is assigned to flying a drone in the middle of the Nevada desert. That humiliates her at first, but she quickly learns that flying drones is, in many ways, just as terrifying as flying F16s, and just as deadly.
Gunn’s deep-seeded performance moved from tough to vulnerable, from cool to hot with honesty and intensity.
This is not an easy play. The actress never gets a break, and is all alone on stage save for a chair and a screen that sometimes shows the sky that Pilot loves to blast off to. That’s an intense job for an actress, and Gunn handles it with expertise.
“Grounded” is a thrilling play by an exciting playwright.
This production not only does it justice, it’s one of the best productions Borderlands has done in some time.
The audience at Friday night’s opening performance was too, too small. That’s just wrong. This play — riveting, never preachy and beautifully written — should be seen.
