Theatre Review: From the Air, Oran Mor, Glasgow

Her youth has gone, her twin son and daughter have just flown the nest; and suddenly, just when she and her husband Pete were about to start enjoying life, forty-something Claire can’t get on a plane. She’s never really liked flying, but this is different; total panic, hideous visions of planes in free-fall and shattered bodies, and endless panicky phone-calls to her daughter before every failed flight, telling her what to do in the event of the inevitable catastrophe.
By Joyce McMillan
Published 24th Oct 2017, 01:00 BST

Her youth has gone, her twin son and daughter have just flown the nest; and suddenly, just when she and her husband Pete were about to start enjoying life, forty-something Claire can’t get on a plane. She’s never really liked flying, but this is different; total panic, hideous visions of planes in free-fall and shattered bodies, and endless panicky phone-calls to her daughter before every failed flight, telling her what to do in the event of the inevitable catastrophe.

From the Air ***

Oran Mor, Glasgow

This is the starting-point for the latest Play, Pie And Pint lunchtime drama from actor and writer Anita Vettesse; and it will be of huge interest to all those who have been affected by fear of flying, one of the most common of phobias, as Claire – played by a hilarious and poignant Angela Darcy – sets off for a day course in how to overcome the fear, with Pete in reluctant support.

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The play’s problem, though, is that it’s not really about fear of flying at all, but about the underlying cracks in Claire and Pete’s marriage. There’s something slightly off-kilter about a play whose central motif - expressed in some powerful visual images, in Davey Anderson’s production – is neither its subject, nor really a metaphor for its subject, but just a symptom of the real problem. Yet with both Angela Darcy and David McGowan working up to some fierce marital truth-telling in the final showdown, this remains a gripping show; even if – in the end – a slightly unsatisfying one.

*Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, until 28 October