Flight – Bridge Theatre / Vox Motus

A review of Flight, part theatre, part diorama installation from Vox Motus at the Bridge Theatre. The story is as harrowing as the format is fascinating.

A Final Outing To The Bridge Theatre Before Tier 3

Once again, I just squeaked through before Covid measures increased. Last time it was seeing Death of England: Delroy on its opening/closing night before lockdown. This time it was seeing Flight at the Bridge Theatre on the day of the Tier 3 announcement for London. This was the last thing I had tickets to before more or less isolating in preparation for Christmas, so I was pleased I was able to check it off the list. As an aside, my tickets had already been rescheduled twice because of shifting Covid measures, so third time was the charm!

What Is Flight, Exactly?

Like I said in the intro, Flight is part theatre and part diorama installation. And maybe part graphic novel and part sound/visual wizardry like Petrichor or Blindness. Like other things put on at the Bridge Theatre recently (like this or this), Flight has been staged elsewhere. It is the work of theatre company Vox Motus, who are Glasgow-based and enjoy challenging their audiences. This particular work has been seen at various festivals and I think in New York as well.

Flight tells the story of two young Afghan brothers making their way to London. Viewers sit in individual booths around a large revolving structure which, as it turns, reveals different scenes in this tale. Each scene lights up as it passes the viewer, revealing models of brothers Kabir and Aryan and other characters in the story. Sound is provided through headphones, and I don’t know how they did it but you can also feel vibrations at certain points: rumbling traffic, heartbeats, the ocean, etc.

This is what makes it like a graphic novel and yet not – static scenes pass by you, one by one. They are animated only by lighting up as they pass, and by the sound through your headphones. The physical set up renders the experience of viewing Flight quite unique. A host assigns each person a group number as they enter, before someone else takes each group downstairs to the backstage area. From there, visitors take their seats one by one, a minute apart, so that the story begins at the right time. It’s a group experience, but not quite. Or an ever-changing group perhaps.

What Is The Experience Like?

On an emotional level, it’s very affecting. Flight is based on a novel called Hinterland by Caroline Brothers, which draws on first-hand conversations with refugees through her work as a journalist. Kabir and Aryan are so young to be dealing with such terrible situations – unscrupulous people enslaving vulnerable migrants; sexual violence; abuse of power by those in positions of authority; physical danger. The tragedy of it is that it isn’t fiction – children just like these from Afghanistan and other countries have lived through this (or not).

From a theatrical point of view it’s almost unique in terms of what I have seen before. The little booth made it very immersive as there was no movement or sound nearby to attract my attention. The boys’ dreams start off with a different aesthetic, before bleeding into real life as they live a nightmare: the effect is quite disorienting. And while it uses technology efficiently, there is also something quite old-fashioned about the use of models and dioramas. It reminded me of Victorian peep shows (not the nude kind but the paper kind), or things like this panorama in The Hague. Before we had more modern distractions, we really used to enjoy experiencing sights or stories in this way.

So you have to be ready for the subject matter, but if you are, then I highly recommend Flight. It is innovative and unique, clever and powerful. Theatre-lovers should catch it if they can.

Salterton Arts Review’s Rating: 4/5

Flight until 16 January 2021 [subject to change, check theatre website for details]