Review: WOMAN! PILOT! PIRATE?, VAULT Festival

Emmy finds her life to be absurdly limiting. When she gets sacked by her boss, she takes the chance to set on a mission to find her idol: Amelia Earhart. The pilot has been missing for 81 years but our heroine is certain she must be somewhere.

Pareidolia - a theatre company who collaborates with emerging disabled theatremakers to create engaging pieces that break boundaries - presents Woman! Pilot! Pirate?, an imaginative show that curiously makes use of what essentially is performed sound design.

Grace Lyons Hudson leads the action as bumbling and fumbling Emmy. She is aided by Samuel Kemp, who stands behind a table cramped with audio equipment to ease her way through the narrative.

The peculiar treatment of music and sound is only the start of the allure of the play. A big wooden device turns into everything, from a pirate to Earhart's plane. Lyons Hudson's physicality is so articulate and suggestive that one forgets that she's barely speaking any words until she settles down to sing a quiet song.

Kemp is inconspicuously spectacular at the music. He establishes the atmosphere with an array of loop machines, keyboards, guitars, and other technological gimmicks. In his near-constant unobtrusiveness, he is as present in the tale as she is to portray such vivid and practical storytelling.

From its dynamics to its intriguing delivery, Woman! Pilot! Pirate? is a striking and absorbing production.

Woman! Pilot! Pirate? runs at VAULT Festival until 3 March.

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