A Number review dizzying double-take on the question of cloning – The Guardian

Caryl Churchills two-hander zips along in an hour, so most evenings theres a talk scheduled beforehand. Presented with the Edinburgh international science festival, each of these conversations picks up on the playwrights theme about the meaning of identity in a hi-tech world. On the night I was there, it was social psychologist Aleks Krotoski and musician-cum-thinker Pat Kane considering the many faces we present to the real and online worlds.

Can we define ourselves as the sum total of our Facebook profiles, Twitter feeds and Instagram selfies? Is any one version of ourselves more true than the others? Or is it that, with or without technology, our sense of self has always been fluid, circumstantial and provisional?

If you leave that talk feeling uncertain of who you are, youll be set even further adrift by the teasing speculations of A Number. Directed with a crisp combination of stillness and urgency by Zinnie Harris, Churchills 2002 play begins with a simple premise: the idea that cloning could produce any amount indeed, a number of genetically identical human beings. That being the case, she asks in a sequence of fraught, unresolved encounters between genetic father and multiple sons, what would it do to the childs sense of self?

How would the cloned Bernard react if he met one of his identical brothers? Could they really be said to be the same person? How can you make sense of the world when youre not even sure youre the genuine article yourself? What role do environmental factors play in a childs developing individuality? Why do we think being unique is such a big deal anyway?

These are more than just abstract questions. Thanks to Churchills formal playfulness, we must scramble to catch up with which version of Bernard were watching at any one time. In this way, the characters uncertainty becomes our own. On the one hand there are the ethical questions about Dolly-the-sheep-style cloning; on the other are the existential questions about who we think we are.

Its dizzying stuff, not least because Fred Mellers telescopic set, with variants of the same DNA-string wallpaper appearing on successive walls, suggests we may be viewing just one austere living room among many. You can imagine cloned variations of Churchills play stretching into the distance.

Adding to the unease is the absence of women. The scenario is purposely all male. We are told about a mother, but she is long out of the picture and the cloning has taken place after her death. That leaves Peter Forbes as a father full of typically male regrets about heavy drinking and absenteeism, and Brian Ferguson as the sons who are variously angry, violent and placid.

They inhabit a masculine world, brooding, confrontational and aggressive. Giving tight, on-edge performances, Forbes and Ferguson circle and pace like caged beasts as if forever searching for the archetypal feminine balance denied them by a morally provocative technology.

At the Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh, until 15 April. Box office: 0131-248 4848.

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A Number review dizzying double-take on the question of cloning - The Guardian