The Events

The Events, various dates in 2016; Belvoir St Theatre, State Theatre Company of SA, Malthouse Theatre. Directed by Clare Watson.

Catherine plays: Claire.

The Events is a very different play, unlike anything I have seen before. Written by Scottish playwright David Greig in 2013 as a response to the 2011 massacre shootings in Norway, the play only has two actors and it also features a different choir each night the play is performed. This is the first time The Events has been performed in Australia.

Claire is a community church choir leader; her choir consists of people from all walks of life (and backgrounds). She comes across as a very friendly and lively person, as she leads the choir in one of their songs. She then sees a 'boy' (Johnny Carr), gesturing for him to come forward and be a part of the 'crazy tribe'. "You don't even have to sing", she tells him happily. For the boy, though, singing is the last thing on his mind and he opens fire on the group (this 'event' is unseen on stage). Instead, the play focuses on the aftermath of the event, and Claire's quest to understand why the boy did what he did. She also appears to be wracked with 'survivors guilt'. During her quest to understand the boy, she visits many people (all of whom are played by Carr, in an effort to show that Claire is seeing the boy in everyone she meets). These people include a right wing politician, the boy's father, a psychologist, as well as her partner, Catriona. The psychologist tells Claire that the boy appears to be 'empathy impaired'; Claire doesn't seem to agree with this, as she instead wonders whether he is just evil or not.

As the play continues, Claire's behaviour spirals out of control: she steals a Twix chocolate bar (or "walks out without paying" as the psychologist puts it), she gets into an argument with her partner which turns to an angry push and shove, she has her choir doing all kinds of crazy songs and rituals (to which one choir member says the choir doesn't want to be apart of anymore), and she attempts to commit suicide by jumping off a cliff. When she visits the boy in jail, she initially has plans to kill him with a powdered 'magic mushroom' kind of poison, but it is during this visit to the jail, that she appears to finally have some sort of closure, and she gets her choir back together again.

There is some swearing in the play with 'fuck' used the most; but perhaps the most surprising was the use of the 'c word', which is said twice by Claire within about ten seconds (when she was talking about some graffiti on a wall).

Overall, I enjoyed The Events when I saw it in Adelaide. I thought Catherine was simply excellent and completely believable as Claire, showing her character's anguish and downwards spiral with great skill. Johnny Carr was good too, playing all the other roles, which wouldn't be that easy to do. And the choir (the night I saw the play, it was a choir called 'Women with Latitude') was also great.

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