2004
A Number
by Caryl Churchill
State Theatre Company
Space, May 2004.
Murray Bramwell
What if your child was lost to you for all of time, and then you had the chance to have it back – would you take it ? The answer is, yes, of course. What if the only means was to clone that child ? The answer is, yes again – very probably. What then, if your child turned out bad and you wanted to start again ? Would you agree to cloning a better model ?
UK playwright Caryl Churchill’s A Number takes us into this ethical labyrinth of what ifs and very serious buts. Written in 2002, this one hour, one-act play for two performers is a startling departure from Churchill’s previous work – large cast, historically panoramic works such as Cloud Nine, Top Girls and Mad Forest. What is notable is the brevity and concision of A Number and its assurance in dramatising questions of identity and its origins.
There is no sci-fi palaver here, no fizzing test-tubes and blank-faced lab workers in white coats or Dr Evil costumes. The play focuses solely on a sequence of dialogues between a father (named Salter) and his son(s) named Bernard and, from there, the play expands outwards with centrifugal force.
Director Marion Potts and designer Gaelle Mellis take their cue from the essentially domestic nature of the play with a starkly simple decor consisting of two unmatched chairs in yellow and orange and a large, enigmatic reverse negative photograph of a rumpled bed. Suggestive of conception perhaps ? Or the bed, once made, that one must lie in ? It is baffling image but also elliptical, in keeping with the boldness of Churchill’s own narrative.
As Salter, Frank Gallacher gives a strong, if mixed, performance. He captures the anguish of someone whose actions have caught up with him but also maintains a convincingly weary indifference to the consequences, reminding us that we often make terrible decisions matter-of-factly. Salter, in grief at the death of his wife, is left to raise an incorrigible child whom he puts into care. It is after this that he has him cloned with a replacement – and unknown to him, nineteen others are made as well. Salter’s confrontation with his true son Bernard is affecting in its ordinariness but Gallacher’s uncharacteristic over-use of gesture is also distracting and needless, especially given the steady strength of the text.
Marcus Graham playing Bernards, 1 and 2, and also the surprise third clone, Michael, is especially good at depicting the uncertainty of sons insecure in their father’s favour. He also has the task of differentiating the triplicate boys. Even though Churchill makes it clear that the indicators are class and dialect, Graham does not need to labour the point as heavily as he does. B1 sounds like a parody cockney and his Michael character becomes almost an upper-class twit – severely undermining the philosophical surprise in Churchill’s point that he is unperturbed at discovering that he is a clone and finds the whole idea quite diverting.
It is to be hoped that these exaggerations in the first night performance will subside as the season unfolds because the actors are well-cast and Marion Potts, with a strong creative team including excellent music from Ian Moorhead, has delivered an engaging and intriguing new production that leaves us with plenty to compute.
“Exaggeration diminished dramatic impact” The Adelaide Review, No.249, June, 2004, p.24.