Samson Airline, directed by Peter Falkenberg for Free Theatre
This is gimmick theatre, a genre not entirely unknown in the many-roomed theatre mansion. Gimmick theatre places special extra demands on both performers and audience as the usual audience / performer dichotomy dissolves. The writer is uncredited but the idea is good if not original. Lets take the audi- ence on a passenger jet flight. We only need a small cast - pilots and stewardesses, we can send up the usual commercial flight conventions ("trust your crew - they know what to do"), and get in a bit of preaching along the way.
With the performance/f1ight scheduled to commence/takeoff at 11 minutes past nine, it is not too difficult to work out what the final destination of this particular flight would be.
The cast put in sterling performances, but the problems were many. The material was insufficient to sustain 90 minutes, so everything was done excruciatingly slowly, and lots of repetition took place. The audience was seated in rows stretching backwards in a very good set (Richard Till) which created an excellent passenger aircraft interior, but meant that the stewardesses were always out of someone's line of sight.
And the final climax, drawing parallels between the twin towers disaster and the pillars of the temple pulled down by Samson in the biblical story, was frankly, tacky. - Barry Grant