Jennifer Chung Klam

San Diego Arts

'A Number' at Cygnet Theatre

"not very like but very something terrible..."
By Jennifer Chung Klam
Posted on Jun 06 2008
Last updated Jun 06 2008

Nature vs. nurture. Despite advances in genetics, that old debate is likely to rage on for some time to come.

It’s just one of the many absorbing themes bouncing around in Caryl Churchill’s enigmatic sci-fi family drama, “A Number,” now playing at Cygnet’s Rolando theater.

The short, 60-minute play unfolds as 35-year-old Bernard learns that he has about 20 genetically identical brothers – the result of both authorized and unauthorized cloning. What's worse, he finds out he's one of the clones. The information sends him into an existential tailspin as he struggles to understand how this happened, and whether he’s still himself. Finding your identity and place in the world is tough enough without a bunch of clones mucking up the process.

Needless to say, Bernard has questions. Things get even more complicated when the original Bernard shows up with more questions and accusations. Their “father” Salter, however, isn’t exactly forthcoming with the answers. Or at least, he dances a mean jig around the truth. Finally, when Salter turns to one of his technology-begotten progeny to find some answers of his own, he’s confronted with a blank slate.

Francis Gercke starkly reveals the disparate personalities of the three Bernards through his physical performance. Despite their identical genes, one is gentle yet uneasy, another dark and menacing, and the third seems so happily superficial that when asked to divulge a single unique trait, the best he can do is to blather about the shape of his wife’s ear.

Salter, who screwed up with Bernard 1, decided he could do a better job if given another chance with Bernard 2. But he didn’t count on there being a Bernard 20. D.W. Jacobs’ perplexed and reticent Salter is alternately tender, indifferent and cruel. Importantly, his personality shifts with each “son,” suggesting that “a number” of personas may also reside within the same person. And that the old adage about apples falling close to tree may apply, even when the apples were cloned in a Petri dish and grafted onto a different tree.

The playwright’s rapid-fire, clipped dialogue requires precision timing, but during an opening weekend performance Jacobs seemed to have some trouble keeping pace. The result was stilted dialogue that slowed things down and confused meaning. Hopefully this will improve as the run continues and the actors get used to the fragmented language.

Director Esther Emery brings her usual theatrical panache to the production, balancing well the silences and the fits, the light with the dark, the humor and the intensity. Jungah Han’s blue-tiled set with vague patterns splashed here and there looks like a bathroom, sure, but it’s also reminiscent of graph paper and mathematical equations, or long chains of chemical structure. Matthew Novotny’s lighting and George Yé’s sound design add immensely to the eerie and slightly sinister mood.

The brief, two-person play tautly focuses on the father-son relationship. But it spirals outward to encompass the ethical queries revolving around current headlines and soon-to-be-realities of pet cloning and cloned food production. Can human cloning be far behind? More to the point, how far would you go to have a shot at redemption?

About the author: Jennifer Chung Klam is an editor at The Daily Transcript and a freelance arts and culture writer.
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