A NUMBER. To 2 November.
Keswick
A NUMBER
by Caryl Churchill
Theatre By The Lake Studio In rep to 2 November 2005
Mon-Sat 8.15pm Mat 11 Oct 2.15pm
Runs 2hr 30min One interval + playreading and discussion
TICKETS: 017687 74411
Review: Timothy Ramsden 10 August
Art, science, humanity - a world in an hour.Experiments with form often substitute for genuine invention, but with Caryl Churchill every play's individual shape is integral to its content; form and subject become a joint exploration of contemporary experience. In this 60-minute play, backstory and character are revealed in precisely necessary proportions.
A Number (implying both numerousness and deperonalisation) combines 2 headline topics without ever being merely journalistic. Scientists' abuse of people's bodies and cloning combine to open up every playwright's essential subject, human nature. Salter, a father, meets 3 versions of his son (there are others). Deducing whether any of the 3 offspring is uncloned leads to considering what makes a person 'real'. As the father struggles to explain their origins to these various forms of his son, his motivates are dragged into the light for examination.
All this is accomplished with a spareness making even the simple comfort of two armchairs for the encounters seem fussy (the repeated inter-scene video-image scramble is impressive but unnecessary). Yet Stefan Escreet's production maintains the unease necessary to Salter's non-contextualised meetings with violent, anxious and benevolent versions of his son.
Here is the opposite of identikit replication. Darrell Brockis shows how the identical-looking offspring exist as separate personalities despite identical genetic make-up, offering an updated angle on the old Nature/nurture debate, or the Naturalists' twin influences of genetics and environment.
Stephen Ley charts the father's moral collapse and physical wearing through the encounters. These minutely-charted performances ensure Escreet's production clarifies the moral quanderies for humanity faced with a technology that's appetising yet unpredictable in its psychological and emotional consequences.
A Number is programmed against the main house's Les Liaisons Dangereuses, a very different story of the misuse of power and position. The studio evening's filled-out with 'tEXtPERIMENT', rehearsed readings of new play extracts about science and society, followed by a discussion. A progressive idea, at the cost of missing out on a full production of another one-acter.
Bernard/Bernard 2/Michael Black: Darrell Brockis
Salter: Stephen Ley
Director: Stefan Escreet
Designer: Steph Warden
Lighting: Jo Dawson
Sound: Andy Bolton
Audio-visual artist: Rebecca Mellor
2005-08-11 14:18:14