Drone Age dilemmas

Drones, Baby, Drones

Image by Arcola Theatre

Playwrights like drones and drone operators: they operate in a tightly confined space, raise moral problems about war, spark introspection and argument, involve instant life and death decisions, and wreak death and destruction.

Drama on a plate. Here come two more efforts, This Tuesday and The Kid, under the joint title, Drones, Baby, Drones.

Both are introduced by a short monologue based on an interview with Clive Stafford-Smith, the admirable founder and director of Reprieve. His quietly devastating words root the short plays (about 45 minutes each) in reality that is already eerily heightened by the timing of the production: the imminent handover of responsibility for okaying targets moving from Barack Obama to Donald Trump – or will the Donald simply tell the military to get on with the job of picking and destroying assassination victims? 

The two plays cover somewhat similar ground. The first deals with the do-we-or-do-we-not press the button when Abdullah al-Rizvi, number three in the Haqqani network is in the vicinity of a wedding party and an agent. The second is a small dinner party after a drone strike in which a young boy is killed along with the target. Two examples of collateral damage.

In the first, the human dimension is provided by a potentially fatal car crash involving the daughter of a member of the president’s national security team, and by an affair between another member of the team and a student critical of his role in drone killings.

In the second play, the tension stems from the contrast in attitudes towards the pregnancy of one of the wives and the fate of the boy who strays into the killing zone.

Between them, the plays run through most of the arguments for and against drone warfare, including the possibility, the likelihood, that one day the drones will come home to roost – the enemy will send its own unmanned aerial vehicles into our homes. Drones R US, but one day Drones Will B Them, and then we won’t be so laid back about their use.

There’s nothing new in the arguments for and against drones and the plot, especially in the first, seems forced, but the dialogue, acting and production are good enough to carry the day … and make you think.

* Drones, Baby, Drones, Arcola Theatre, 24 Ashwin Street, E8, until 26 November. Info: 7503 1646/ BOXOFFICE@ARCOLATHEATRE.COM