If I followed my mother’s adage of not saying anything if I can’t say something nice, this would be a short column. Well actually, there were some high points in Harlequin Productions’ The American Pilot. But not many.



Scott C. Brown, Elliot Weiner and Amy Hill delivered solid performances. No surprise there. Solid actors land solid performances no matter how much the script fails. And they are solid actors.



There, something nice.



The root of my frustration with this show is that it truly seems as if the playwright didn’t have any concept of either war, the global extent of the American culture and military operational procedures or codes of conduct. He must have thought that Hogan’s Heroes was a documentary. There were just too many things wrong with the story’s premise that could have been easily solved with a Google search.



Scotsman David Greig wrote the work as a way to examine the human condition during times of stress and the complexities about how the rest of the world views America both as a land of abundance and opportunity and as the great devil of the modern world.

The story follows the happenings in an unnamed village in a land ripped by more than 20 years of civil war. The set and costumes suggest it was one of the “stans” following the breakup of the Soviet Union. An American Air Force pilot crashes and finds himself in the care of local militia leaders who battle over what to do with him.



The story seems compelling enough, but it quickly falls apart since it takes place in modern times yet the villagers know nothing about an iPod or modern music. They have access to the Internet but believe American forces don’t know one of their pilots has been captured. FACT: rescue teams are often scrambling to a crash scene before a pilot’s parachute hits the ground. Helicopters would be swarming the skies like mosquitoes on a hot summer day in Mississippi. That pilot would not have to wonder if his forces were looking for him several days after his crash, as the play stated. Or that the villagers would not know what to do with a downed pilot, or for that matter, that the pilot would not know what to do. Both were caverns in logic that were difficult to overcome.



And don’t get me started on the language barrier bit or that Nate Kirkwood was absolutely and completely unconvincing as an Air Force officer, let alone a pilot. His temper, arrogance and demeanor were not consistent with what his training would be for such matters.



[Harlequin Productions, The American Pilot, through May 23, 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday, $24-$33, 202 Fourth Ave. E., Olympia, 360.786.0151]