IT was an incredible privilege to witness this one-woman tour de force in Central Studio this week.

George Brant’s work couldn’t ask for more than the performance of English actress Lucy Ellinson, who delivers his smart monologue without a single false note in her American accent.

That’s to be expected by this stage; she’s been performing the Gate Theatre’s production of this work since it took the 2013 Edinburgh Fringe Festival by storm.

The atmosphere was heightened from the off when we entered the intimate performance space of the theatre, on the QMC campus, to encounter Lucy, utterly motionless, in Oliver Townsend’s ingenious gauze box.

For the next 65 minutes, we were utterly captivated by the story of her unnamed pilot, who adores being up there in the blue, but who is first grounded by a pregnancy, and then by her participation in drone warfare.

Rather than being up actually in a plane, in possible danger, she feels the pain of its becoming a virtual experience in which she sits in a room on a Las Vegas army base and stares at a grey screen, searching for guilty parties 1.2 seconds away from her trigger.

As with all of the best works of art, Grounded is about so many things, particularly our increasingly technological world and how aspects of it have removed us from what is real.

Personally, I was drawn to this ebullient woman in a man’s world, who had such tender dreams for her own daughter.

Grounded’s future is golden – Anne Hathaway is to play the role in New York, directed by Julie Taymor – but those who have seen Ellinson in action will certainly feel that their experience could not have been bettered.

*See Grounded at the Corn Exchange in Newbury on February 5 at 7.45pm. Tickets are £14 (concessions available) online at cornexchangenew.com. 

Its remaining tour dates are online at gatetheatre.co.uk.