Margin Notes: Flight Risk

Flight Risk

Grace Sallee as Andi. Photo source: press kit.

Seen on: Thursday, 3/07/24.

Plot and Background

A Collective presents a brief run of Dakota Silvey's debut play, Flight Risk, expanded into a full-length play after it won the Gene Frankel Theatre Fifteen Minutes of Fame One-Act Festival. Flight Risk follows midwife Andi, pilot Cooper, and a stranger named Clark in the forests of Alaska after their prop plane crashes.

Thoughts:

Play: This has the makings of a good play: high stakes, three characters at cross purposes with each other, and a series of secrets and revelations to be uncovered. However it also builds itself a few roadblocks that prevent it from fully landing. Perhaps the biggest one for me is the playwright's belief that a psychopath is dramatically interesting by dint of his unpredictability and unknowable nature. Unfortunately, once it's been made clear Clark is a psychopath who lies as easily as he breathes, it gets boring for me, and it just becomes a waiting game to see if he will kill the others or be killed by them. Likewise, the characters of Cooper and Andi are so desperate for the other to not learn their respective secrets--yet share them readily with Clark--and then when all is revealed, not that much seems to have changed. I don't know that the stakes, though high on paper, are ever fully actuated in the performance in a way that convinces me that this matters, or that anyone surviving this crash will be profoundly changed by what they experience in this endless twilight purgatory.

Cast: I mentioned it above, but a general sense of low stakes runs under the performances of the three leads, a lack of urgency in their physical performance of what it is to be stranded in Alaska with insufficient warmth and a seeping wound. Perhaps with more time with the script, this could be strengthened and deepened, so that I feel not only the intensity of the connection among these three characters, but the depth of their fear, anger, and whatever feral nature is brought out by being forced into these circumstances.

Design:  Shawn Lewis's scenic design--copses of trees and rocks--is full of shadowed danger as lit by Gilbert "Lucky" Pearto's lighting and further illuminated by Rachel Shatzkin's projections. Lucky's lighting is especially potent in the prologue scene on the plane itself, shaping not only the confined space but illuminating the world darting past through the windows, as Cooper tries to steer through the eye of a massive storm. Mark Reynolds's costume design has a good eye for detail: Clark's hunting gear looks the part, until you notice how unscuffed his boots are, how crisp his camo pants are. Contrast those with the well-worn boots, trousers, and jacket of Cooper, and one sees clearly who is at home in this landscape and who is merely playacting. Cooper's clothes, like Cooper, are built to last hardship; Clark's are another costume to try on while he makes his escape. I do wish Reynolds had paid a bit more attention to how to account for Cooper's injuries (blood on only one side of his shirt, and no makeup on his exposed torso for the bullet wound), but the other elements are well-thought-out.

***

Running: Now playing at the Gene Frankel Theatre (A Collective) - Opening: March 6, 2024. Closing: March 10, 2024.
Category: play
Length: 2 hours, 10 minutes, including intermission.

Creative Team

Playwright: Dakota Silvey
Director: Dougie Robbins
Designers: Andrea Miller (Production Stage Manager), Grace Nguyen (Assistant Stage Manager), Shawn Lewis (Scenic/Props), Mark Reynolds (Costume), Gilbert "Lucky" Pearto (Lighting), Luis Antonio Guzmán Galdos (Sound), Rachel Shatzkin (Projections), Katie Rosin/Kampfire PR (Publicity).
Cast: Erik Van Conover, Conor Andrew Hall, Grace Sallee.

Grace Sallee and Conor Andrew Hall as Andi and Clark. Photo source: press kit.