Perma-smiles attached, red bows tied just so atop their pristine uniforms, Toni and Jane give us the lowdown on their sky-high jobs as flight attendants. Heads turn as they walk into a room in their work outfits, and people depend on them should anything go wrong.
Toni (Amanda Wright) and Jane (Louise Ludgate) are in control 30,000 feet up, but on the ground things are shifting. Toni is in a toxic relationship, while the cracks are showing in Jane’s treasured house — and possibly her marriage.
And while the two have been friends for years, they aren’t really honest with each other — not even when they get hammered in an anonymous hotel room in some city that looks pretty much like all the others they visit.
There’s a lot of cross-cutting dialogue, odd syntax and repetition in Stef Smith’s play, its looping cadences giving an almost hypnotic quality to this tale of female friendship, modern womanhood and the climate calamity that may await us.
Smith tries to pack a lot of themes into 70 minutes — perhaps too many — but Bryony Shanahan’s sympathetic direction and superb performances by Ludgate and Wright enable this piece to take flight.
Until August 25 (tickets.edfringe.com)
