Take Flight

Take “flight,” for instance, says the incredulous inventor and mathematician Otto Lillienthal (Clive Carter) at the top of this intriguingly ambitious new musical; it’s just another stupid way of trying to prove yourself a hero, like the man scoffing hot dogs or the other one standing on a single leg for days on end.

The air show by the American team of librettist John Weidman, composer David Shire and lyricist Richard Maltby Jr is through-sung, a contrapuntal sub-Sondheim style examination of three stories of aviation pioneers: the Wright Brothers trying to get airborne with kites and gliders on a fly-blown North Carolina beach; Charles Lindbergh obsessing in Minnesota about a solo flight to Europe; and Amelia Earhart trying to outdo him and strike a deal with an escape clause from her publisher husband, George Putnam.

It’s hard not to conclude, though, that the machine stutters on the run-way and has trouble achieving theatrical lift-off. The musical and narrative momentum seems painfully engineered, with only fleeting rhapsodic episodes piercing the clouds of effort. “Don’t ever land,” advises Amelia, whose tryst with oblivion seems a little excessive just because she doesn’t know a recipe for meatloaf.

Sam Buntrock’s production does its best to provide a following wind, and is niftily designed by David Farley on a sloping sandy beach (the Wright stuff) with the band, led by Caroline Humphris, perched either side on platforms behind packing cases.

Cockpits are on the top of simple ladders, and the main characters are backed by an adept small chorus of quick-change journalists, fellow travellers, cynical businessmen and even show girls (when Amelia’s first burst of fame earns her a skit in the Ziegfeld Follies).

We were treated at the Edinburgh Festival last year to a gorgeous staging of Brecht and Weill’s radio cantata about Lindbergh’s flight to Paris which not only expresses man’s conquest of the elements but also the metaphysical misgivings of the lone sky ranger. Michael Jibson’s quivering, troubled Lindbergh conveys something of this, but his graduation from an aerial stunt showman to transatlantic adventurer remains land-locked in his own selfishness; he’s hardly a visionary.

Similarly, Sally Ann Triplett’s crop-haired Amelia is a butch Biggles with a few giggles and a proto-feminist determination to prove herself rather than achieve fusion with the universe. Her wedding deal with Ian Batholomew’s dapper, blinkered Putnam is sealed in a tortuously banal duet about holding on to the secret part of yourself.

The wittiest, and most enjoyable, lyrics belong to the Wright brothers whom Sam Kenyon (Wilbur) and Elliot Levey (Orville) play as a provincial comic double act in bowler hats before stumbling on their Kitty Hawk success. They just about get off the ground, which is the best you can say of the show as a whole.

–Michael Coveney