The Events @ Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh

Wonder Fools’ touring revival of David Greig’s The Events begins in a way that feels alive. The audience are welcomed like members of a choir rehearsal – offered tea and coffee, and gently drawn into song. For a moment, the space does hum with the familiar warmth of a real community space. This early folding-in is smart and disarming as the play's contents are revealed: a shooter has committed an unspeakable act of violence against priest and choir director Claire's gathering space. 

Claire Lamont’s Claire is open and buoyant in her attempts to keep holding the world together after the shooting that has shattered her choir. Opposite her, Sam Stopford is electric, ricocheting between the Boy and a carousel of other figures with almost-unnerving stamina. His fixation on tribalism, race, borders, loneliness and the need to “make a mark” through violence is still, unfortunately, contemporary – even for a play first staged in 2013.

The live community choir is the production’s beating heart. Their rough edges – the over-singers, tentative voices and abounding earnestness – sit in a nice contrast to the actors’ polish. A moment where they sing their confusion about the incident directly to the Boy lands with a plainness that is striking.

But as Claire digs deeper into the Boy’s psyche, the play circles the same void again and again. Claire's emotional unravelling becomes a bit relentless after the hour mark, and the script’s fascination with the Boy's belief system sometimes feels more developed than its sense of who Claire is beyond her quest for understanding. For a work so concerned with community, the absence of fuller voices from within that community is noticeable.

Even if the questions The Events asks are as bracing as ever, its answers feel increasingly underwhelming.

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The Events, Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, run ended