This powerful, beautiful and moving play left me emotionally overwhelmed by its conclusion.

The Events is a 2013 play by Scottish playwright David Greig about a woman who survives a mass shooting at her community choir meeting.

It is an intricate, fast-paced and clever production that follows Claire, played with wired and brittle energy by Alison Bruce, as she struggles to come to terms with what has happened and comprehend the ruthless nihilism that has shattered her world. Arlo Gibson plays the perpetrator of the mass murder, known only as The Boy, but also transforms himself into politicians, journalists, former friends of The Boy and even the Boy’s absent father who Claire seeks out in her desire to find some reason for the mass shooting.

It is a simple and pure idea that has many complex strands. [More] 

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David Greig’s challenging exploration of the troubled path to forgiveness in the face of seemingly mindless violence is as relevant to our own society as to his Scottish homeland or to Norway, after Breivik’s hideous mass killing or indeed anywhere the beast rages. It offers us some hope as individuals or community that it is possible to neutralise the anger, grief and desire for revenge such events inevitably trigger. Only efforts to understand, let alone forgive those who break the fragile shell of what we hold to be civilised behaviour, come at a heavy cost. 

The play begins as members of a parish community choir assemble for a routine practice. They are a relaxed and tuneful lot and from a different choir for each performance, so that there is a genuine sense of spontaneous familiarity about them. Opening night’s choir is the NASDA chorus in splendid voice. Everyone is welcome here and everyone is happily focussed on Claire their leader, an energised and cheerful priest.

The newcomer who appears will change all that. It is The Boy, a gangly figure wearing the uniform hoodie, come to make his mark on the world, to be as potent a catalyst as Bob Geldof or Jesus. He has prepared himself as a tribal warrior, painstakingly entering what he sees as an almost holy state of ‘beserkness’ to take the ‘enemy at their feast’. The attack is on community unity itself.

However, the plot zips about in time and memory. It delivers on the mindset of The Boy as well as tracing the aftermath for the priest and her increasingly obsessive search for some rational explanation, an understanding of motive which could then allow forgiveness and resolution. Claire, who has hidden from and survived the slaughter, asks desperate questions of a whole range of others. Neither counsellor, pastor or psychologist provides an answer to the overwhelming ‘Why?’

The right wing politician whose race-based ideology The Boy partly followed is no help. Neither is an author’s purification theory or the bewildered father or the school friend, who just knew The Boy as a fellow outsider. It is Claire’s partner Catriona who articulates the destructive effects of such impassioned searching for answers which cannot be put into words. But there are clues in the solid presence of the choir, the metaphor of its harmony and its final inclusive words ‘We’re all here’.

Daniel Pengelly and his creative team manage the complexities of this demanding play to riveting effect. Meggan Rollandi’s set, Giles Tanner’s lighting and costume from Sarah Douglas all function to support and enhance a pair of super-charged roles. 

As Claire, Alison Bruce spins the thread we must follow and her intimately detailed work is explosive in quality. The Boy is played with simmering intensity by Arlo Gibson who also fills the host of other parts. There is a deliberate blurring of their individual distinctiveness as all relate to Claire’s inner turmoil, but each is named as she engages with them.

As an unflinching and demanding analysis of what it means to be disconnected socially, culturally or politically from a community, the production is outstanding. This achievement, combined with the play’s ultimate compassion, celebrates the power of theatre to delve into the dark places of society and bring some understanding of them. 

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