![]() "What she does, in a series of fraught, emotional encounters, is use the scientific possibility to address basic human questions: above all, what the source is of that mysterious thing we call personality. Churchill is not offering us a debate on the ethics of cloning," the critic Michael Billington wrote in The Guardian. In a barrage of tense, spare conversations between Salter and the sons, the work also explores sibling rivalry the expectations and responsibilities of parents and children nature versus nurture and the essence of identity itself. When glamour couple Greg and Candice extend an invitation to an intimate spa party, Bruce and Annie realise they may have misjudged their friends, and each other, for all these years. Synopsis: Bruce and Annie are an average married couple. On the surface, "A Number" is about the moral and personal implications of genetic engineering. Cast: 5 (2M, 2F, 1M/F) Running Time: 10 minutes. That is certainly the case with "A Number," which is to open Tuesday at New York Theater Workshop in the East Village.Ī slip of a play, only 65 minutes long, it has just two parts: Salter, a flustered and defensive father (played by Sam Shepard), and three of his sons, clones of each other (all played by Dallas Roberts). But by the same token, it adds to her mystique and forces audiences, so often spoon-fed with official interpretations, to take some initiative. Churchill is generally regarded with something close to awe in the London theater world for her passion, curiosity, rigor, openness to collaboration and for being, as the critic Charles Spencer wrote in The Daily Telegraph, "the least predictable of contemporary playwrights." Her elusiveness can be maddening for those trying to understand her plays, which are elliptical, provocative, shocking and increasingly pared-down they seem to cry out for a cool authorial voice to help answer the questions they raise. Churchill remains a rare thing, a hugely successful playwright who lets her work speak entirely for itself. In a world where serious playwrights constantly sit on panels, hold forth at academic conferences and appear on behalf of institutions like the British Council, Ms. ![]() LONDON - CARYL CHURCHILL is one of the most critically acclaimed playwrights in the English-speaking world, and perhaps the single most acclaimed female one, but she is a mystery wrapped in an enigma.
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