A Number

by Caryl Churchill

seen at the Bridge Theatre on 26 February 2019

Polly Findlay directs Roger Allam as Salter (the father) and Colin Morgan as Michael, B1 and B2 (the sons) in a new production designed by Lizzie Clachan of Caryl Churchill's 2002 play concerning a man who, it transpires, has arranged for his son to be cloned, but is unaware of how many 'copies' were made.

In an ordinary slightly rumpled living room, an insecure son confronts his father, having just discovered that he not unique (though he hasn't actually met any of his 'twins'). Salter's immediate reaction is to stall and to muse about suing whoever is responsible, though he eventually has to admit that he condoned 'a single' cloning, and that the boy is not the first son. Unsurprisingly, the boy, already fragile, is very discomposed, rocked by the realisation that much of his family story is a fiction.

Blue Heart

by Caryl Churchill

seen at the Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond on 14 November 2016

Blue Heart, directed by David Mercatali, consists of two short plays, Heart's Desire and Blue Kettle. Each is daringly experimental, yet each reveals the tensions and deceptions lurking behind ordinary and plausible situations.

In Heart's Desire Brian (Andy de la Tour), his wife Alice (Amelda Brown), his (or her) sister Maisie (Amanda Boxer) and his son Lewis (Alex Beckett) are awaiting the return of his daughter Susy (Mona Goodwin) from Australia. The scene plays out the final few minutes before the door rings to herald Susy's arrival, but disconcertingly the dialogue begins again and again with variations that reveal often wildly divergent outcomes. Sometimes there are outbursts of anger and rage, sometimes not, but the calmer versions are only gradually developed after the outbursts cause a blackout and a return to the beginning, or perhaps to the last point at which civility was apparent. It is a terrific ensemble piece as the three older adults in particular have to repeat themselves meticulously over twenty times. Occasionally, to add further technical difficulty, the familiar parts of the scene are speeded up as if fast-forwarding a tape (the play dates from 1997) - movements are jerky and the dialogue is reduced to odd words.

Light Shining in Buckinghamshire

by Caryl Churchill

seen at the National Theatre (Lyttleton) on 16 April 2015

The play, directed by Lyndsey Turner, features a cast of eighteen speaking actors taking some twenty-seven parts supported by forty-four members of the Community Company, a group created from the outreach work of the National Theatre's Learning Department.

'Light Shining' looks at the English Civil War and the Commonwealth not as a conventional history play dramatising pivotal historical events (the King's duplicity, the battles, and so forth) but rather through a whole series of vignettes in which ordinary people grapple with the perplexing ideas of their time: dissent, obedience, millennial hopes, freedom, bondage, religious faith. The first half closes with scenes from the Putney Debates of 1647, taken from the transcripts of the sessions. Here, significant historical characters such as Oliver Cromwell and his son-in-law Henry Ireton are indeed present, but there is no attempt to characterise them or to provide their 'back story' - the focus is entirely on the debate concerning democratic representation.