‘Spirit Control” gets off to a nail- biting start. Air-traffic controller Adam Wyatt (Jeremy Sisto) is helping a passenger land a small plane after the pilot passes out. Problem is, the panic-stricken Maxine’s never held a yoke before, and the fuel gauge is almost in the red.
As his colleague Karl (Brian Hutchison) anxiously looks on, Adam gives step-by-step instructions to Maxine, whose disembodied voice is heard over the radio. It’s all very “Airport 1975,” and the tension ratchets up and up as the aircraft goes down and down.
Up to this point, playwright Beau Willimon (“Farragut North”) has us in the palm of his hand — but then the show plummets in free fall.
“Spirit Control” tracks Adam over the 25 years following that tense afternoon in 1985, made worse by a literal-minded FAA bureaucrat questioning his response to the crisis.
Traumatized, Adam leaves his job, and his relationship with his wife (Maggie Lacey) and two sons deteriorates. He flirts with a woman in a bar (Mia Barron), which would be fine if she weren’t a figment of his guilt-ridden imagination.
This sexy stranger seems the living embodiment of what Adam perceives, rightly or not, as his failure. At least it won’t be lost on anybody that for someone in the communications business — he even takes up selling cellphones — Adam is alone.
Sisto (Detective Lupo on “Law & Order”) is saddled
with an underdeveloped character, which Henry Wishcamper’s journeyman direction doesn’t help illuminate. Still, the actor is the best thing in the show, and his stoic opacity is quite affecting.
But it works only up to a point because the plot is riddled with holes and questionable ellipses. The refusal of Adam’s older son (Aaron Michael Davies) to engage with his dad isn’t convincingly explained. Besides, if Adam has two kids, why do we see only one? It’s hard to believe Manhattan Theatre Club couldn’t spring for another actor.
It may deal with matters of life and death, but “Spirit Control” feels curiously indifferent. And when Willimon blurs the line between fantasy and reality a final time, the show skids off the runway for good.
elisabeth.vincentelli
@nypost.com