A Number
Caryl Churchill's 70-minute drama unfolds like a hall of slowly warping mirrors. The play opens with Salter, in his early 60s, talking to his 35-year-old son, Bernard. They refer to people as things. And things as people. Bernard, it turns out, is Salter's son once-removed. He's B2, a copy of the original, cloned by "some mad scientist." And B2 isn't the only one. For experimental reasons, or some Andy Warhol proliferation fetish, the scientist made 20 Bernards. Salter says they're just duplicates, "things," calling to mind the cyborgs in Blade Runner. B2 disagrees: they're every bit as human as the original. They just weren't first. In five terse, packed scenes, A Number combines nature with nurture. Different clones become different Bernards in a Rashomon of replication. For Cygnet Theatre, Francis Gercke plays B2 (sensitive, nervous), Bernard (the original: a thug, his tattoos the mark of Cain?), and Michael Black (who fell, so to speak, far from the tree). Whether flopping backwards on the leather sofa or doing violence to an orange, Gercke's sharp, physical performance shows how different a similarity can be. As the various Salters (he's different with each son), Douglas Jacobs verged on the strident, early on opening night, but became moving as Salter pays the price for playing God. Salter's differences open up a counter-theme: Churchill suggests that each of us may be multiple, may already have "a number" of selves within us. As she did with Yellowman at Cygnet, director Esther Emery took a script with no stage directions and filled it with theatrical life. Jungah Han's midnight blue set, tile squares from floor to ceiling, could be a lavish, ancient Roman bath. Exposed caulking creates groupings. As the play's theme takes hold, the clusters come to resemble chains of molecules.
Worth a try.
When
Ongoing until Sunday, June 29, 2008
Hours
| Sundays, 2pm & 7pm |
| Thursdays, 8pm |
| Fridays, 8pm |
| Saturdays, 8pm |