Review - The Events

The Events

By David Greig

A co production with Belvoir and State SA Theatre Company

Direction – Claire Watson

Cast Includes Johnny Carr and Catherine McClements

Set and Lighting Designer - Geoff Cobham

Musical Director – Luke Byrne

Composer – John Browne

Malthouse Theatre

21 June – 10 July 2016

Johnny Carr and Catherine McClements - Photo Pia Johnson

The Events, is a fictional story set in a small Scottish town, written by Scottish Playwright David Greig in response to the 2011 mass shoot in Norway.  This intelligent, skillful work is a testament to Greig’s capacity for deeply interrogating difficult and profound subject matter.  

Greig’s protagonist Claire a Vicar has the humanity, courage and deep spiritual need to confront and understand what has happening to her ‘flock’ after a murderous attack on her choir.

As Claire Catherine McClements a deeply perceptive, intuitive and seasoned performer is able to shine light on the many complex responses from being intimately affected by the profound and irrevocable experience of a massacre.

McClements is a wonderfully available and accessible actor.  Her performance, conveying the thought processes and roller coaster ride of emotional highs and lows, is insightful and unaffectedly nuanced as she processes coming to terms with the unholy act of mass murder and its consequences.  She intricately handles the exposition of the voice of reason in a totally unreasonable and devastating situation. 

The direction by Claire Watson is measured and clear.  Ms. Watson, guided by the writing, does not attempt to tug on heartstrings or take the moral high ground.  She allows the various thoughts, arguments and at times overwhelming anxieties to be expressed and witnessed.   As observers we take the journey with Claire.

Catherine McClements and Johnny Carr
by Pia Johnson

The audience is included most specifically at the start when it would seem that a latecomer is being called in and involved.   As with the theme of community and a Minister and her flock this man, the offender a mass murderer, comes from amongst us.  Actor Johnny Carr whose work is satisfying and appropriate within the whole plays him, along with a number of other characters.

This is cerebral Theatre, which although moving, does not illicit visceral engagement.  As audience one feels removed and safe to engage only as far as able.  This is partly due to the staging, which would need to be more adventurous and destabilizing to really let the viewer into the potent distress.

Simple set changes are made to the community hall to designate various environments.  This reminds me of classroom performances. 

The Choir sang so movingly on opening night as doubtless all the chosen choirs, a different on each evening, will sing.  Members of the choir also double as players in the story and questing members of the public.  The story is about a choir and the choir frames the whole. 

It takes a foolhardy spirit and a load of courage to work on Theatre about contemporary disasters.  The difficult question is, how long, as ‘breathing time’ is needed between actual events and their dramatic reinvention and presentation to result in ‘good theatre’?  How long is a piece of string?  Maybe?

If you were fearful of seeing this one because it might be too distressing don’t be.  It radiates a massive sense of humanity and poignancy and one feels kind of removed – maybe even uplifted due to the singing and sense of community.  And Catherine McClement’s performance is not to be missed!

Suzanne Sandow

(For Stage Whispers)