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That's because the pilot is far more complex than we may immediately recognize, or for that matter even like her to be. "I was born for this," she says at one point of soaring through the air in her F-16, sort of a ruler among rulers. She even refers to her de facto office constantly as "blue," with the mountain flatness of her voice lilting just a bit (she's from Wyoming) in a way that suggests she perceives the sky as something uniquely personal, as though it's her calling or, even more accurately, her lover. She has a human lover, too, though, in Eric, a civilian she meets at a bar, spends the night with, and quickly becomes tied to in ways she hadn't anticipated. Before long, she's pregnant, soon to be married, and no longer in any condition to fly. But though she intends to return to her blue once her baby (Samantha, or Sam, it turns out) is born, her commanding officer has other plans: She's to relocate to Las Vegas and be a land-based pilot for the new breed of unmanned aerial vehicles—or, as we might call them, drones. Her tenure begins uneventfully, unexceptionally, as she calibrates herself to sitting behind a desk and staring at a gray screen all day, most of the time seeing nothing through the high-resolution camera her 19-year-old colleague controls. Then one day she discovers a dot that resolves itself as a gang of "military-age males" along the side of the road: "You can't see faces, not really," she explains, "But you don't need to—your mind fills them in." Once she receives confirmation from her commander, she pushes a button and her targets are eradicated, from 12 hours and thousands of miles away. This event reverberates through the rest of Grounded, as Brant explores the corrosive psychological effects such easy, responsibility-free killing, from within the pilot's increasingly frenzied brain.
Hathaway, too, is terrific. Her pilot is unfailingly feminine, at times even sensual and sexual, but she balances these qualities with a bulletproof bravado that doesn't let you forget how she's had to adapt herself to survive in a man's world (and, it's implied, a man's military). But it's only gradually that she allows these roles to lurch and shift, and you see her resolve cracking as she discovers that Sam is the girly girl she never wanted to raise but now can't stop loving (she's addicted to—gasp—Pinkie Pie from My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic), and, worse, that she's being impelled to question the acts she commits with her UAV when such dilemmas simply did not exist (at least in the same way), when life was only her and blue. If this performance represents some of Hathaway's very best work to date, on either stage or screen, it's only possible because so much of Grounded is so beautifully written. Brant has conceived it as a kind of modern poetry that, by never calling attention to itself, wrenches you into its all-consuming world. "Hard to go home tonight," she says as she approaches the apex of her breakdown. "The desert isn't long enough / Still have bodies in my head / I orbit our block a few times / Hope Eric isn't looking out the window / Then I pull up and the door opens and the happy family greets their hero home from the war / Every day / Every day / Every day they greet me home from the war." The result is a searing slow burn that rises in intensity for most of the play's 85-minute running time. There are some missteps. Sound designer Will Pickens has miced Hathaway far too loudly for the small Anspacher space, occasionally disconnecting her voice from her body. Brant lays on the symbolism overly thick, with a panoply of violent color call-outs, the surging omnipresence of see-it-all security cameras, the mystical powers of the pilot's flight suit, and others competing too roughly for dramatic prominence. And the ending devolves into pure, improbable preachiness, straining against itself to make a neon-outlined point and tug at your heartstrings. Such gimmicks are hardly needed, as Brant otherwise handles similar concerns effortlessly and abstractly, and with even greater impact. Those scenes depict all the wonder, promise, fear, and hopelessness associated with attempting to retain control of our souls in a world that every minute tries something new to rob us of them. Grounded doesn't try to predict what will be left if we lose that battle; Brant likely doesn't know (does anyone?). But it makes powerfully evident the necessity of keeping our eyes and hearts minded as we fly into that uncertain future, into the blue that sustains—and could easily obliterate—us all.
Grounded
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