The American Pilot

Synopsis

A spy plane crash lands in a remote valley in a distant country. The local villagers take in a wounded pilot. The question is: what should they do with him? The American Pilot explores the way the world sees America and the way America sees the world.

Our Review:

10 May 2005

American Pilot, the second piece in the RSC's 'new work' season, takes flight where Solstice before it, failed to illuminate.

Written by the prolific David Greig who recently had two plays running in London, Pilot is a timely meditation on American hegemony: economic, cultural - and military. Set in an unspecified Near or Middle Eastern country, it examines the world's love-hate relationship with 'the world's only superpower'.

An American pilot falls out of the sky and into the lives of a group of villagers. To Evie, daughter of the farmer who found him, he is the object of her prayers, harbinger of a better life, symbolised by a vision of a great new dam.

To the captain, waging an un-winnable war against a Government supported by the United States, he is an unsought nuisance; to 'the trader', a source of possible profit, to the 'interpreter', an object of both loathing and attraction.

Greig'...

Read more of the review

Latest User Review

81.76.36.28) - 2 July 2005:

Four stars for the acting, 1 star for the play. An excellent cast - when is the RSC going to start serving its actors with worthwhile contemporary writing? I think they should probably screen individual plays before putting them on, instead of just handing out commissions and putting on whatever writers come up with. Something needs to be changed in the way they select plays....

Read more and add your own review