The Event

John Clancy's monologue play is, for at least three-quarters of its length, a brilliant piece of self-reflexive meta-theatre.

Taking and holding the stage with quiet authority, David Calvitto explains that the titular event is what we are experiencing right now, with strangers sitting in the dark, watching a man in the light speaking words written by another man for him to memorise and rehearse.

The monologue continues in that key, describing itself as it happens and even allowing for deviations from the script, which are, we are assured, all scripted.

Beyond the cleverness, though, the event is effortlessly expanded into metaphor, the audience passivity reflecting a larger inclination to let others think and speak for us, the anonymity of both speaker and listeners hinting at urban isolation and lack of social bonds.

It is there, roughly at the point Calvitto sits down, that Clancy's writing weakens its hold and the metaphor almost collapses. Rather than continuing to comment on and through the event, the speaker mounts a soapbox and lectures the audience directly on the failures of modern society, becoming merely a mouthpiece for the author.

Perhaps sensing this lapse, playwright and actor struggle to re-establish the original mode, though never fully succeeding.

Calvitto's performance throughout is a tour-de-force of control and complexity, sustaining the speaker's reality while simultaneously commenting on it from outside.