Review: Black Swan State Theatre Company’s The Events

Johnny Carr and Catherine McClements in The Events. Photo by Daniel J Grant.

Written as a response to the two sequential lone wolf attacks in Norway in 2011 that claimed 77 lives, this story is sadly just as weighty in 2018 and no doubt unfortunately will remain so into the future.

Claire is a left-wing female Anglican minister who has personally experienced the unthinkable, and for 75 minutes, specifics of the event are slowly unravelled through two main characters, Claire – the victim, and The Boy – the antagonist, who also slips into other character profiles briefly throughout the play, exposing the details and distress of the lasting effects of The Boys actions.

Save for one short glimmer, audiences are spared any horrific particulars, instead being presented with thoughtful philosophical questions and summations about human nature, culture race and religion. Norwegian shooter Andres Breivik, who shot 69 people at a summer camp and eight government officials on a two day spree, claimed to be defending Norway against immigration as he blamed multiculturalism for the failings of his country. Playwright David Grieg carefully uses this premise to discuss these issues within the context of a fictionalised mass shooting in a small town in Scotland.

Claire, played by Catherine McClements, runs a community choir, which creates the platform for the event and then subsequently becomes a mechanism of healing for her. The genius of this play is placing an actual choir and pianist onstage with the actors every night. Various choirs are given the music to rehearse prior to the performance, but not the script, so the unpractised interaction between actors and the choir further adds to the authenticity and intimacy of the event. Composer John Browne has chosen a beautiful selection of pieces that cannot help but resonate warmly with everyone in the room, furthering the connectedness between audience and stage.

Claire is highly accessible and brings forth elements of character that we can all relate to in people we know. Claire is searching for reasons and explanations as to why anyone would create such destruction, and her journey swings from challenging to endearing. This is a lady with a lot of demons but is also someone you would look forward to inviting over for afternoon tea.

Johnny Carr as The Boy, and every other character, is wonderful. He plays the range of characters with a subtle skill and absence of caricature that enables the audience to piece together thechronology and personage around the event without any ambiguity, no mean feat.

The staging is simple but clever, transporting the audience to familiar scenes of town and church halls without much effort. The initial transition between waiting for the performance to begin and theactual start was almost unnoticeable, effectively removing the fourth wall barrier between audience and stage. The act of setting and moving chairs gave a physical structure which allowed the audience to clearly discern identities and interactions of changing characters and scenes.

Watching McClements is pure joy and I would willingly part with money to see her in literally anything else, as as far as actors go, McClements has got chops, is the real McCoy, and I hope also does some teaching to impart her seemingly natural wisdom and guise into the next generation of performers.

The Events is theatre pared down to essentials in a very successful way. Intelligent dialogue, intimacy and depth of character, simple unobtrusive setting and technicals, but most of all a deep respect for the audience as an integral part of the journey. I loved this in so many ways. Congratulations to all involved.

Rating: 5 stars ★★★★★