Attack of the clones in A Number

The play examines family relationships

By Neil Smith BBC News Online

It is feast or famine for London's theatregoers at the moment.

At one end of the spectrum is Tom Stoppard's Coast of Utopia trilogy at the National: a cast of 40 wrestling with nine hours of meaty ideological debate.

At the other is Caryl Churchill's A Number at the Royal Court: one act, two actors, in and out in under an hour.

The odd thing is that Churchill's dense, unsettling play gives the viewer just as much to think about as Stoppard's bum-numbing opus.

Replica

The titular "number" in the Churchill work refers to the unspecified quantity of clones that have been made of Bernard (Daniel Craig) - the volatile, possibly deranged son of Michael Gambon's 60-ish patriarch Salter.

The performances are magnetic

In the first of five elliptical scenes, Salter tells his favoured clone, also called Bernard, that he is the replica of a child lost, along with his mother, in a car crash.

In the second, however, we learn that Salter's wife actually threw herself under a train and that he had Bernard number two made when the original went loopy, probably as a result of parental neglect.

Later we meet one of the other clones - a schoolteacher called Michael who has lived his life blissfully unaware of his bizarre provenance.

Tangled

Obviously, the not-so-fanciful scenario touches on all manner of political, ethical and scientific quandaries.

It also addresses the desire some parents have to genetically create the perfect child by eradicating imperfections in the test tube.

But Churchill is much more intrigued by the tangled relationships between fathers and sons, the concept of the bad seed and the way we seek to perpetuate ourselves through our offspring.

Incidentally, these are themes that feature in current film release Road to Perdition, in which Craig also appears.

Fireworks

Simply staged on a stark rectangular dais, A Number has a topicality and prescience that more than compensates for the lack of theatrical fireworks we normally associate with director Stephen Daldry.

And in the shuffling, bear-like Gambon and the subtly mutating Craig - wearing the same nondescript clothes throughout yet expertly differentiating between each of his incarnations - it boasts two (or should that be four?) magnetic performances.

Inevitably, there will be some punters who will feel short-changed by the brevity of the piece.

Yet as Churchill so ingeniously suggests in this powerful cloning drama, it is not the quantity but the quality that counts.

A Number is on at the Royal Court theatre in London from 23 September - 16 November.