Individuality questioned in A Number

Individuality questioned in A Number

19 October 2011

Father and son duo Timothy and Samuel West star in A Number at The Fugard Studio theatre. Photo: Jesse Kramer

‘We are all individuals,’ is the famous line from Monty Python’s Life of Brian that, old and oft-repeated as it is, still produces a snigger or wry smile at its truism.
For while we are each one of us unique, we are also more alike than we may wish to admit. We prize our individuality, yet seek to fit within the bounds of what might be considered normal, even the eccentric has been drawn into realm of acceptable exceptions to the rule.
Yet what happens when this idea of our individuality is challenged? What would we do if we discovered there was not one, but 20 or more of us?
This is the question playwright Caryl Churchill examins in her play A Number, which opened at The Fugard Theatre on October 4. Written in 2002 when cloning was a hot topic of debate – Dolly the sheep was successfully cloned in 2005 – it is written for two actors, and has four characters.
Bernard (B2) lives with his father, Salter, but then discovers the existence of a clone (B1). The question of who is the original is the main dramatic question, and questions escalate when a third clone, Michael Black, appears. In fact, B2 hears there may be 20 or more clones.
What is special about the run at The Fugard’s Studio stage is that the two actors are father and son team Timothy and Samuel West, who had no fewer than seven five-star reviews during their recent run in London’s West End.
WCN was able to pull them out of rehearsals before the opening to chat about the play.
Timothy, who turns 77 later this month, looks every bit the elderly Englishman dressed in hues in brown and tan, while his son Samuel, 45, in jeans and a grey hoodie, apologises for not having shoes on.
It is very soon apparent that there is no issue of Sam – as Timothy calls him – living in his father’s shadow.
In fact Tim – as Sam calls him – tells how when director Richard Eyre offered him the part of elderly Maurice in the film Iris, Richard’s condition was that Sam accepted the part of the younger Maurice in the film.
Timothy’s own father, Lockwood West, was an actor and his wife and Samuel’s mother Prunella Scales is also an actor. “It’s the family business,” says Sam.
Conversation quickly turns to the philosophical questions raised by A Number with Sam noting that the ethics of cloning seem to hold little interest for “Caryl” (Churchill).
“A Number is much more about the human interest, which is what Caryl is all about,” says Tim, as Sam adds that the play provides a situation – cloning has happened, “and these are the results”.
Sam mentions that when they did their first run at The Crucible in Sheffield in 2007, Dolly had been cloned two years prior and cloning was a “hot topic”.
“But we’ve moved away from that, the issue now is more about genetic predetermination. There’s talk of insurance companies doing genetic profiling and refusing to provide life or health insurance cover because your genetic make-up shows you’re prone to cancer, for instance. These are the sort of things that the play fights against, it’s a celebration of individualism.”
Tim notes that “conflict arises when people think they don’t own their individuality” and, possibly drawing on the wisdom of age, reflects that, ironically, “the happier people don’t worry about the fact that they’re not the only one, that they don’t stand out from the crowd.”
Talk of individuality leads to speculation on the society we live in.
“It’s an extraordinary function of global capitalism that we don’t have much of a freedom of choice yet we live in a culture where we’re being sold individuality all the time, as tiny little choices from mass produced items, like you can have extra cheese on your McDonalds,” says Sam, or people defining their personality by the things they own.
Caryl throws a curve ball in that while B1 and B2 react very badly to the discovery that they’re not the only ones – as might be expected – the third clone, Michael Black, who is married with children and works as a maths teacher, is unperturbed by the discovery.
Tim and Sam believe the message here is that the greater the number of loving relationships in a person’s life, the happier they are bound to be.
“It is clear that Michael has had a balanced upbringing, he talks simply and beautifully about love and is at the centre of a large number of loving bonds. B1 on the other hand, does not even have a dog to love him, there’s nobody in his life, no bonds. Caryl believes in the strength of these bonds very much,” says Sam.
It’s also clear that Sam must have had a balanced upbringing to be able to act with his father in a play which raises so many questions of identity and upbringing.
“You have to well-adjusted off stage in order to beat the shit out of each other on stage,” says Sam. — Steve Kretzmann
A Number plays at The Fugard Theatre Studio until October 29

A Number is great theatre that exhilarates and provokes

A Number is great theatre that exhilarates and provokes

Marianne Thamm | 16 October, 2011 02:16



Slater (Timothy West) and his son,
Bernard 2 (Samuel West) Picture: JESSE KRAMER



 

Dolly the sheep inspires play, writes Marianne Thamm

CAPE TOWN

THEATRE

A NUMBER

Fugard Theatre, 021 461 4554, until October 29

IMAGINE someone walks into a room full of people, tosses in a grand idea and walks out again. That's more or less what British playwright Caryl Churchill accomplishes with A Number, an exhilarating 50-minute philosophical and dramatic riff that provokes a range of questions and thoughts.
Churchill, regarded as one of the most significant contemporary British dramatists, wrote A Number in 2002 shortly after scientists had cloned the world's first sheep, Dolly.
Here she uses cloning as a prompt for the much larger concepts the play attempts to explore but deliberately never quite resolves. The mystery of it all - like the double helix of a strand of DNA - is what slowly and unwittingly reels the audience in. This is a play not only about secrets, lies and betrayal but also the essence of individual identity.
It takes place on a starkly lit stage with one armchair. Above, a slab of test tubes hovers like a futuristic chandelier. Here we find an obviously uneasy and evasive older man, Slater (Timothy West), being confronted by his son, Bernard 2 (Samuel West).
Bernard 2 is distressed at having learned that he is a clone, a copy of a son Slater had five years before his birth.
But there's more. Bernard 2 has discovered that the scientist who "made" him has also created at least 20 other copies. The truth unlocks for him an existential crisis of identity.
The play unfolds in five interlocking scenes in which we later meet the angry and menacing "original" Bernard 1 (also played by Samuel West), whom Slater abandoned after the death of his mother.
Without giving away too much, Bernard 1 exacts a terrible revenge for his father's attempts at "recreating" him.
Towards the end Slater meets a second clone, Michael Black, for the first time. Black is the same age as Bernard 2 but much less tortured about his origins. In fact he finds it "delightful" that he is a clone.
Inside of this triangle Churchill bounces ideas of nature versus nurture and what it might be that makes us authentic and unique. But it is also what is not in the text that resonates intellectually long afterwards.
For example Churchill's deliberate exclusion of the female or the maternal, the narcissism of procreation, the role of violence in male identity and the chauvinism of science.
This revival of the London production features Timothy and Samuel West, a father and son acting duo. It is the younger West who has to work harder here in rendering each of the characters differently. A change of clothing, gait, accent and nuance is all that is required as West fully inhabits each one.
The older West is a beautifully manipulative and emotionally withholding patriarch caught in a web of lies, recriminations and regrets.
Churchill's text gives no stage or set directions and director Jonathan Munby steers a steady course between the playwright's porous dialogue and the unusual unfolding of the story.
A Number is great theatre for those who enjoy being intellectually cajoled and provoked. And like life itself, there are no neat resolutions.

Cloning: it’s an identity crisis

October 11 2011 at 09:05am
By Theresa Smith

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A NUMBER

DIRECTOR: Jonathan Munby

CAST: Timothy West and Samuel West

VENUE: The Fugard Theatre

UNTIL: October 29

RATING: ***

The looped sound of a crying child greets you upon entering the Sigrid Rausing room at The Fugard Theatre, creating a creepy atmosphere, helped along by eerily-lit stalactite test tubes.

The very simple stage contains only a chair and a side table and the staging has been done in such a way that you feel almost voyeu-ristic. The seating rakes up two sides of the room, and you are constantly watching the charac-ters’ profiles, peeking into their lives, as the younger ones confront the older man.

Bernard (Samuel West) challenges his father, Salter (Timothy West), about apparently having been cloned, and finds out that it is true and he doesn’t really know his father after all.

When Bernard finds out he was cloned he starts to question his identity, uncovering a lifetime of family secrets. Does the existence of a clone damage his uniqueness, he asks his father.

While the ethics of cloning was the provocative topic when this play was first staged in 2002, it seems to have faded into the background, foregrounding the issue of how identity is created.

Turns out Salter had his son cloned so that he could start over again with a new son and get it right, but as Bernard puts it – he can’t give his dad credit for one thing if he can’t blame him for the other.

West sr creates a dignified character who is more indignant that the cloning doctor made a number of copies than that the secret’s out. While he stands by his actions, Salter becomes progres-sively plagued by doubt, coming across as increasingly vulnerable.

West jr gives us three different sons: the first, Bernard, is scared by the idea of losing himself in the morass of too many Mes; there’s an older Bernard who is much more confrontational, angry and physical; and a Michael who seems to be the most well-adjusted with his own family.

West uses more than just clothes to create three characters with different attitudes, accents and personalities.

For all the atmospheric eeriness created with the lights, set and sound design, it’s surprisingly non-weird because it’s a story about fathers and sons. For all the clever lines about individuality and responsibility, the line that stands out is from the first Bernard: “When you’re small your father isn’t old or young, he’s just a dark presence.”

The ploy of using a real-life father and son team brings the intimacy of that relationship into sharp relief. Because they know each other so well, the jagged dialogue is believable; they don’t have to mimic each other’s speech patters, they already have that. Sentences don’t end, they talk over each other and use short-hand, the way people who know each other well do.

This isn’t a tale about playing God, but a gentle take on nature versus nurture, coming down firmly on nurture’s side. It’s short, sharp and to the point, but it doesn’t beat you over the head with the message; the playwright prefers to show rather than tell.