Why does the play "Grounded" get so much attention and praise?

Grounded, a play written by George Brant, produced by the Nora Theater Company, starring Celeste Oliva.

We saw the new play "Grounded" last night, and neither of us liked it. I'm surprised at the generous reception it's gotten, including in this review by the Boston Globe's Don Aucoin. It's played in ten different theaters recently, around the country.

I was bored with it after the first few minutes. The main character, a female fighter pilot, has almost no depth to her character. She's a sort of male jock-pilot, in a woman's body. Her entire 83 minute monologue is delivered in a harsh, terse and unvarying voice. The predictable events, sketchy themes, and what little drama there is -- a female pilot is assigned to pilot drones flying in the Middle East looking for enemies to kill, from a base in Las Vegas -- seem straight out of the recent headlines and columns. There is no doubt good material here -- the moral drama of killing at a safe distance, with your own life kept in god-like security, is good stuff. But it's largely undeveloped. The pilot's language and expression stays close to cliche throughout. The slight uptick in interest at the end, when the pilot hallucinates the presence of her own young daughter onto the video screen, and thus refuses to pull the trigger to kill the "guilty" bad guy, is just not enough. It felt more like an artificial ploy to give the play a climax.

This struck me as more of a sketch for a play than a finished play. So why does it get so much attention and praise? The professorial-looking Cambridge audience gave it a brief standing ovation at the end. Was it the female character in a role overwhelmingly filled by men, a gratifying salute to liberal sensibilities? Was it the insertion of the little girl, the target bad guy's daughter, that humanizes and evokes sympathy for a man otherwise vilified as a terrorist?