A Number (NHB Modern Plays)

Caryl Churchill

• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781780011417
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Drama
• Index: Literature

A fascinating meditation on human cloning, personal identity and the conflicting claims of nature and nurture.

Winner of the Evening Standard Award for Best Play of 2002. A Number was first staged at the Royal Court Theatre, 2002, starring Michael Gambon & Daniel Craig.

' A Number confirms Churchill's status as the first dramatist of the 21st century... The questions this brilliant, harrowing play asks are almost unanswerable, which is why they must be asked' - Sunday Times

'Caryl Churchill's magnificent new play only lasts an hour but contains more drama, and more ideas, than most writers manage in a dozen full-length works. Part psychological thriller, part topical scientific speculation, and part analysis of the relationship between fathers and their sons, it combines elegant structural simplicity with an astonishing intellectual and emotional depth...What a tremendous play this is, moving thought-provoking and dramatically thrilling' - Daily Telegraph

'Rarely in my theatre-going experience has a new play conveyed such a disturbing or enthralling impression of domestic weirdness that some families may endure in a not entirely hypothetical future... It's an astonishing event' - Evening Standard

1.

SALTER, a man in his early sixties and his son BERNARD (B2), thirty-five.

B2	A number
SALTER	you mean
B2	a number of them, of us, a considerable
SALTER	say
B2	ten, twenty
SALTER	didn’t you ask?
B2	I got the impression
SALTER	why didn’t you ask?
B2	I didn’t think of asking.
SALTER	I can’t think why not, it seems to me it would be the first thing you’d want to know, how far has this thing gone, how many of these things are there?
B2	Good, so if it ever happens to you
SALTER	no you’re right
B2	no it was stupid, it was shock, I’d known for a week before I went to the hospital but it was still
SALTER	it is, I am, the shocking thing is that there are these, not how many but at all
B2	even one
SALTER	exactly, even one, a twin would be a shock
B2	a twin would be a surprise but a number
SALTER	a number any number is a shock.
B2	You said things, these things
SALTER	I said?
B2	you called them things. I think we’ll find they’re people.
SALTER	Yes of course they are, they are of course.
B2	Because I’m one.
SALTER	No.
B2	Yes. Why not? Yes.
SALTER	Because they’re copies
B2	copies? they’re not
SALTER	copies of you which some mad scientist has illegally
B2	how do you know that?
SALTER	I don’t but
B2	what if someone else is the one, the first one, the real one and I’m
SALTER	no because
B2	not that I’m not real which is why I’m saying they’re not things, don’t call them
SALTER	just wait, because I’m your father.
B2	You know that?
SALTER	Of course.
B2	It was all a normal, everything, birth
SALTER	you think I wouldn’t know if I wasn’t your father?
B2	Yes of course I was just for a moment there, but they are all still people like twins are all, quins are all
SALTER	yes I’m sorry
B2	we just happen to have identical be identical identical genetic
SALTER	sorry I said things, I didn’t mean anything by that, it just
B2	no forget it, it’s nothing, it’s
SALTER	because of course for me you’re the
B2	yes I know what you meant, I just, because of course I want them to be things, I do think they’re things, I don’t think they’re, of course I do think they’re them just as much as...