Charlie Victor Romeo

Going to see Charlie Victor Romeo is like slowing down to witness a car-crash – it ignites our fascination with emergency and disaster in a way that we know is wrong but lures us in regardless. Charlie Victor Romeo is a theatrical documentary made-up entirely from the Black Box transcripts of six real-life airline emergencies. As a result, this is utterly chilling.

Take Japan Air Flight 123, scheduled to arrive into Osaka from Tokyo on 12 August 1985. After ten minutes of flying, the bulkhead ruptured leaving the crew with virtually no control of the plane. Despite the mechanical problems the captain managed to steady the aircraft for half an hour before it crashed into a mountain, killing 520 of the 524 people on board in the deadliest single-airline crash in history. These are harrowing facts which make for uncomfortable reading, yet in Charlie Victor Romeo they are made all-the-more gut-wrenching.

On a simple stage, showing just a cockpit and the tip of the aircraft, we watch the emergency un-fold, hearing the actual words of the cockpit crew who are desperately trying to steady the plane. “We’ll go for a drink when this is over” the captain light-heartedly tells his crew. “I don’t drink but I’ll have one tonight” comes the reply. For a play which could be written in a foreign language for all its technical jargon, it is remarkable enthralling. The script covers every cough, breath and stutter as laid out in the black box transcripts which makes this a compelling study of human endurance and the psychology of crisis.