Brace Brace is a creative masterpiece upstairs at the Royal Court with writing that doesn’t quite match that level
“A plane fell out of the sky, and we happened to be on it”
It seems scarcely credible that a play about a plane hijacking that led to it falling out of the sky could be based on something that happened to the writer but here we are. Oli Forsyth has adapted an event that he and his family were involved in years ago to tell a different kind of story in Brace Brace, taking write about what you know to entirely new heights.
Anna Reid’s set design does a magnificent job in the Jerwood Theatre Upstairs: traverse staging drawing us closer in an already intimate setting and fully immersing us in a heartstopping enactment of the hijacking (Paul Arditti’s sound brilliant here too) which proves as terrifying as the opening to the first Final Destination film (if you know you know).
But from here is where Forsyth spins his story. Ray and Sylvia are a young couple on this flight and it is in the different ways that they deal with its aftermath that is the body of the play. We discover in flashback that Sylvia stopped the hijacker but is suffering from PTSD, exacerbated by his escape from a jail sentence after claiming mental health. And Ray being a straight white man finds it hard to deal with his wife being the one that saved them all.
At a tight 70 minutes, there’s not room for much else and there’s barely any room for really digging into what is presented. The contrasting ways in which we deal with major trauma is a fascinating premise but this format robs the answer of all the multi-layered complexity that it surely must possess. Instead, the play errs to simplistic binary responses which flatten the credibility of the characters and the issues that they argue over.
Phil Dunster and Anjana Vasan deal well with the constant switches between dialogue and direct address and are engaging in the depiction of the literal and metaphorical highs and lows of their relationship. And Craige Els multi-roles in a genius way, including as the hijacker, using his physicality so well. It’s just not abundantly clear what Brace Brace is trying to say, beyond displaying the excellence of its creative team.