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Airline Highway: A Play
Airline Highway is a rollicking play that, with great insight, humor, and subtlety, examines a tight knit community of "outsiders" over the course of a single, legendary day. The Hummingbird Hotel is the figurative or literal home for a group of strippers, French Quarter service workers, hustlers, and poets who are bound together by their bad luck, bad decisions, and complete lack of pretense. Presiding over them is Miss Ruby, a beloved former burlesque performer who has requested a funeral before she dies. As the people whose lives she has touched gather to celebrate her, they must face themselves, each other, and the consequences of the choices they have made. Airline Highway shows us the tenuous hold that community, authenticity, and real-time ritual have on a rapidly gentrifying New Orleans.
160 pages, Paperback
First published August 31, 2015
3 people are currently reading
65 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
September 19, 2015
A slice of life play of the disparate lives of the inhabitants of The Hummingbird Hotel. Truly damaged people with depth and heart create their own family and now they are saying goodbye to their "mother". These quirky, exaggerated, yet real characters force the audience to consider their own life choices, the nature of family,love and happiness. Is it a feel good play...no, is it a play that will make you think...yes, is it a play worth reading...most definitely!
September 27, 2015
A poignant portrait of "flawed" characters who are doing their best to make it through the day. Every character is identifiable and relatable with well-drawn, realistic story arcs to make the reader think about one's relationship to life.
November 22, 2017
New Orleans' Underbelly
Lisa D’Amour’s play introduces us to people tossed aside by life but who have found something resembling family at the Hummingbird Hotel, a wreck of a place that early on we know is doomed, as the area is undergoing gentrification witnessed by the building of a new Costco nearby. It features a large cast of failures, from the affable hotel manager, to the down and out prostitute, to the transgender performer, the burned out poet, the guy who got out (with the best name, Bait Boy), and the matriarch of the place, the dying former burlesque queen, Miss Ruby.
The play progresses through a day and it’s a monumental one as Hummingbird occupants, in love and gratitude to Ruby, are granting her wish and putting on a funeral party (Act II) for her, as she wanted in advance of her death while she could enjoy it (though she is enfeebled to the point of confinement to a concocted wheelchair and the ravages of dementia).
The dialogue overlaps and spins around the set, giving the production a built-in fast pace, but which requires audiences to pay close attention. Often it’s raw, as you would expect from folks kicked around by life and dumped on the road to the airport, and funny, too. But it also mines quite a bit of sentimentality, more sympathy for the characters, less empathy.
While it is definitely fun and colorful to watch, especially an immersive black box production, it may leave you feeling a bit less than fulfilled or with any more insight into the condition of marginal society, other than that people can create and need community even in the most awful circumstances.
Lisa D’Amour’s play introduces us to people tossed aside by life but who have found something resembling family at the Hummingbird Hotel, a wreck of a place that early on we know is doomed, as the area is undergoing gentrification witnessed by the building of a new Costco nearby. It features a large cast of failures, from the affable hotel manager, to the down and out prostitute, to the transgender performer, the burned out poet, the guy who got out (with the best name, Bait Boy), and the matriarch of the place, the dying former burlesque queen, Miss Ruby.
The play progresses through a day and it’s a monumental one as Hummingbird occupants, in love and gratitude to Ruby, are granting her wish and putting on a funeral party (Act II) for her, as she wanted in advance of her death while she could enjoy it (though she is enfeebled to the point of confinement to a concocted wheelchair and the ravages of dementia).
The dialogue overlaps and spins around the set, giving the production a built-in fast pace, but which requires audiences to pay close attention. Often it’s raw, as you would expect from folks kicked around by life and dumped on the road to the airport, and funny, too. But it also mines quite a bit of sentimentality, more sympathy for the characters, less empathy.
While it is definitely fun and colorful to watch, especially an immersive black box production, it may leave you feeling a bit less than fulfilled or with any more insight into the condition of marginal society, other than that people can create and need community even in the most awful circumstances.
September 14, 2020
The easiest way to describe this show is that it’s a non-musical version of RENT set in New Orleans instead of NYC. An intimate look inside the lives of those living outside the glamour. A thoughtful portrait of how those in need are often the first to lend a hand. A reminder that family is who you choose to love.
Despite a large cast, all characters are clearly devised and deserving of your attention. The language is incredibly natural - some revere the ability to write “how people talk” but those playwrights still often write in a back and forth manner. D’Amour crafts the simultaneous, overlapping speech one hears in a family who has had the same conversations many times before.
Very large, diverse cast. Single set, though it’s a big one: hotel and car. Also calls for some musical talent and choreography for the party.
Despite a large cast, all characters are clearly devised and deserving of your attention. The language is incredibly natural - some revere the ability to write “how people talk” but those playwrights still often write in a back and forth manner. D’Amour crafts the simultaneous, overlapping speech one hears in a family who has had the same conversations many times before.
Very large, diverse cast. Single set, though it’s a big one: hotel and car. Also calls for some musical talent and choreography for the party.
July 3, 2021
i loved this play so much and it’s hard to describe the impact it had on me. it had me laughing and genuinely in tears towards the ending. this is one of those reads that i’m going to keep by my side for a long time and enjoy forever. it’s such a weird and lucky situation because i found this for 50¢ at a thrift store.
August 25, 2018
A producer’s nightmare, the demands as far as design are intense, however this is a golden gem of a play that builds to a powerful and poetic conclusion. You see it coming from a mile away but that doesn’t matter as you still want to see it.
September 22, 2024
This works well. It's a good portrait slash elegy for a group of people and a highway motel. The characters are pretty wonderful. Airline Highway also uses the form of realism to very good effect.
October 2, 2018
A great ensemble play with rich characterization.
December 26, 2019
Excellent!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 26, 2022
A beautiful play. The ending was not my favorite but the first act and a half were brilliant
February 5, 2023
Vibrant
April 2, 2023
It was a good play. Entertaining. However, I didn't see the character relationships that clearly in this play though.
August 22, 2016
Take Lanford Wilson's 1973 Obie-winning play, 'Hot l Baltimore', transport it to post-Katrina New Orleans - and voila - you have this play! In actuality, this is a fairly decent piece of theatre, and undoubtedly would play well with its multitude of colorful loser characters, despite some overwritten passages, especially the ending monologues and 'revelations' ... However, I took an extra star off for an especially annoying habit of the playwright that has become all too endemic in modern playwriting - namely, on virtually EVERY single page, instead of giving specific stage directions, the author says 'maybe' this happens or 'perhaps' this could occur ... or either this or that 'could' happen. Freaking annoying, and makes one think the author doesn't know what the heck she wants. You never heard Tennessee Williams say "Perhaps Blanche makes her way to the door leaning on the arm of the doctor" did you?
April 26, 2016
A really great piece of playwriting here - would love to see a performance of this.
April 2, 2017
I have little experience reading plays. Luckily I attended Ms. D'Amour's master class at the Tennessee Williams Festival. Lisa brought along four actors who read parts of two plays, this one and Detroit. Airline Highway is the story of the denizens of The Hummingbird Hotel. For those of us who love New Orleans the characters seem both familiar and true to life.
The characters are by turns delightful, comic, quixotic and pathetic. They are society's cast offs. Whores, hustlers, exotic dancers, people who are difficult to find in most places, but who are cogs in the wheel and essential to the functioning of NOLA's French Quarter.
Reading Airline Highway was a delight and a lesson in life.
The characters are by turns delightful, comic, quixotic and pathetic. They are society's cast offs. Whores, hustlers, exotic dancers, people who are difficult to find in most places, but who are cogs in the wheel and essential to the functioning of NOLA's French Quarter.
Reading Airline Highway was a delight and a lesson in life.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews