UK playwright plans drawing on Breivik's Norway killings

One of Britain's acclaimed writers for the stage, David Greig, has created a musical show based on the murders in Norway committed in 2011 by Anders Breivik, The Guardian reported.

Greig, who has also written the book for the new Sam Mendes film musical of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, researched the project on Utøya island and in Oslo, visiting the country with the director Ramin Gray three months after the atrocity that saw the lone killer end the lives of 77 people.

Called The Events, the show examines the limits of human empathy and will be premiered this summer at Edinburgh's Traverse Theatre, before it travels to London for a run at the Young Vic.


"I was most interested in how Norwegian society was feeling," said Greig this weekend. "Oslo is not a huge city and everybody pretty much knows everybody else, so almost everyone we spoke to had been affected. Some people asked us not to write or talk about Breivik. I am not at all certain whether we give him a victory by ignoring him or trying to understand him. That is what I wanted to question."


Greig and Gray, who already shared an interest in Norway, spoke to many who had lost friends and relatives. As a result, the writer eventually decided not to name Breivik in the show and to relocate the atrocity to his native Scotland.


His story centres on a woman, described as being "at the centre of the events", who has to try to decide on her response to the impact of a politically and racially motivated mass murder.


Gray, who commissioned Greig to write the piece for the Actors Touring Company, recalled that on their Norwegian trip they talked to a journalist who revealed that he had been at school with Breivik and was able to give them detailed information.


"We had a lot of angst about whether it was at all right to even do something on this," he said. "It was such a devastating incident, but David wanted to ask whether there are limits to empathy and whether it can even become destructive itself."