Community spirit is everything in David Greig’s meditation on the aftermath of a mass shooting, revived after a decade in this new collaboration between Cumbernauld Theatre and the Glasgow based Wonder Fools company. As priest Claire attempts a forensic investigation into the reasons behind such a seemingly random attack by the young man who committed it, her quest involves conversations with her partner, her doctor, a right wing politician who may or may not have inspired the killer, and the boy himself.
Beyond this, the community choir she runs and which was decimated by the slaughter becomes a form of salvation. This is embodied by the seventeen-strong on stage ensemble drawn from real life North Lanarkshire communities who become the heart of Jack Nurse’s production.
Greig’s play may have been sired from the wreckage of Anders Breivik’s mass shooting of teenagers at a Norwegian summer camp in 2021, but in the ensuing decade events troublingly similar to those portrayed here have moved ever closer to home.
Played out on Becky Minto’s set of tellingly unoccupied chairs stacked high, Nurse’s production is pulsed by composer John Browne’s piano-led score and sound designer Gary Cameron’s cracked interventions. Lizzie Powell’s lighting gives the stage a holy glow.
At the centre of all this are two wonderful performances. Sam Stopford gives life to the Boy with a matter of fact intensity, as well as playing some of those left behind who try to explain his actions. Claire Lamont gives a heartrending turn as Claire, a woman of faith looking desperately for clues without any higher power around to explain things.
In the end, as Claire realises, whatever the motivations behind the killings, revenge is not enough, as Greig’s play becomes a hymn to humanity. Despite all the horrors inflicted on each other in the name of one cause or another, it is the power of song and the harmony it brings with it that heals.
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