Get Tickets for the Piccolo Spoleto reprise of A NUMBER

A NUMBER:
PURE Talent Confronts the Domestic
Consequences of Cutting-Edge Science

by Jason Zwiker
Charleston City Paper Reviewer (Piccolo Spoleto)

PURE ensemble member David Mandel flows between personae in this performance of Caryl Churchill’s A Number. He shrugs one set of mannerisms off and dons the next with a ritual changing of shirts in the spaces in-between the scenes. More, he does so with an apparent natural ease.

The characters he plays are variations on a theme; separate expressions of identical genetic material, clones and the real boy from whom they were scraped. The play is an exploration of the relationship between father and son — or rather sons — and the slow unfolding of past experience through memories batted back and forth across a dining room table.

The question on the table is common to all of us: had we the chance to do it all over again, would we become different people or would blood win out in the end?

Salter, played by College of Charleston theatre professor Mark Landis, obtained through science the chance to try again with his son. At some point in his past, he elected to have the boy duplicated and tried to be a better father to the copy than he was to the original. Along the way, he seeded lies in the mind of his newly-made son, fiction that made the past prettier, and it is only upon confrontation that the truth begins to show through the cracks.

He wanted things to seem simple for the child. But sweeping inconvenient truths underneath the carpet only leads to control being torn from one’s hands down the road.

Slightly stiff in the beginning – this is the character he is playing, a man whose wall of untruths is coming undone — Landis gives a striking performance as a man reduced to probing for answers and grasping at ghosts.

The variables are too numerous and even the right questions to ask remain elusive.

A NUMBER • Piccolo Spoleto • $15, $12 seniors/students • May 30 at 8 p.m.; May 27, 29, June 1, 4 at 6 p.m.; May 28, June 2, 3 at 9 p.m.; June 6, 8 at 5 p.m. • PURE Theatre


Charleston City Paper Buzz-o-Meter
BIG BUZZ
Piccolo Spoleto Preview by Nick Smith


What is it? Charleston's PURE Theatre lives up to its name with a stripped-down, no-frills slice of remarkable theatre, distilling the dramatic potential of human cloning in a one-hour show. Why see it? Two guys. A sparse set. Multiple characters, plotlines, and ideas. PURE's performance of A Number was chilling when it premiered last year, and the ensuing six months have made the play's themes no less relevant. Whether or not the cloning concept grabs you, this show's really about the relationship between a father and his son(s), the lies that parents tell their children with the best intentions, and the inevitable fallout of those lies. But regardless of familial status, chances are there's something in A Number that will hit a nerve in every audience member. Who should go? Theatre-goers with busy schedules or short attention spans, and aspiring actors who'll see how much a performer can do in a short time with the right kind of material. Buzz If this show matches the standards of its 2005 run, then it's definitely one to catch. (Nick Smith)

2-man show, 'a number,' is about 'quality'

by Carol Furtwangler
Post & Courier Reviewer

In one hour at the Pure Theatre production that opened Friday night, you get more real theater than you might reasonably expect during another company's whole season.

The production, "a number," explores an astonishing number of aspects of human cloning in a two-man show (plus one mute, unnamed character played by Beckham Letson) that does not simply provoke thought, it engenders individual perspectives on this hot topic.

R.W. Smith, a regular member of the Pure Theatre company, directed the purely brilliant actors Mark Landis and David Mandel. Landis, a longtime member of Actors' Equity Association, offers a powerful, understated, tightly controlled portrayal of "salter," who engineered the birth of two sons, one a clone of the other.

Mandel, understood to be playing multiple characters (via a ritualistic change of shirts), lets his lines happen so naturally, you forget they are lines. His vulnerability and pain grow out of his halting speech, wavering voice, his hangdog expression; next scene, he becomes the progeny demanding explanations.

Playwright Caryl Churchill's script, polished like old sterling to a high sheen, is a taut study in human psychology, a profound tale of the consequences of cloning, but beyond all else, an achingly moving story of the connection(s) between a father and his son(s).

The stage is, appropriately, nearly bare of furniture and props, the music is hauntingly pensive, the lighting effective, especially in scenes when the house goes to black just before the dialogue ends.

It is the quality of the performances, however, that make this piece a must-see for audiences interested in professional theater.

The Clone Wars
PURE's ensemble tackles a tight,
thought-provoking play

by Nick Smith
Charleston City Paper Reviewer

With the birth of Dolly the sheep in 1996, Britain's Roslyn Institute was transformed from a worthy research center into a marvelous high-tech sideshow. There, Scottish scientists were busy playing God. (Their choice of animal wasn't so surprising; Scotsmen have spent centuries cultivating an, er, intimate knowledge of their bleating buddies.) Now that we knew that scientists were capable of replicating sentient life, we wondered what other tricks were up their sleeve. For a while, anything seemed possible. Yet nine years later, Dolly is dead and the future seems further away than ever.

So where does that leave PURE Theatre's A Number? The piece concerns a dissembling dad and his cloned offspring, who all have different personalities. As such, it explores similar themes to the Schwarzenegger-by-numbers flick The Sixth Day and Ira Levin's The Boys From Brazil. The play is already less shocking than in 2002, when it was first performed by Michael Gambon and Daniel "James Blond" Craig. Fortunately, the fun here isn't derived from the concepts so much as the way they're presented.

Playwright Caryl Churchill flaunts her Brechtian influences with a simple, episodic one-hour show. The first four scenes contrast one son -- the gentle, bewildered Bernard 2 -- with a proto-Bernard, neglected as a child and aggressive as an adult.

Churchill seeks to subvert the fantastic trappings of A Number. She's aware that the genre is renowned for starting a story with an ugly lump of exposition, so she obliges. Salter (Mark Landis) confesses that he had a facsimile made of his son after a car crash. The son has just learned that he has a number of photocopied siblings, and he's in shock. The dialogue is believably disjointed, and Salter seems sincere as he attempts to help his son deal with the news.

In the next scene Churchill dumps the expositional lump -- Salter has been telling porkies, and his real son isn't happy about it. The audience is disoriented by the appearance of Bernard 1 (all the Bernards are played by the same actor, PURE repertory member David Mandell) and spends the scene sifting through the misinformation they've been given. Bernard 1 has violent tendencies, but possesses enough self-control to sit with his dad and discuss family matters.

Here's where Churchill earns her writer's fee, because A Number doesn't rely on cloning for all its dramatic possibilities. Instead, it explores the foibles of fucked-up families, nature versus nurture, alcoholism, and the mourning process. It hinges on Cain and Abel-sized sibling rivalry, while Salter's paternal responsibilities are examined and found wanting. Genetic tampering has given him a second chance after failing his original son. He gets to play daddy all over again, learning from his mistakes in a mirror of the evolutionary process.

As the dad, CofC professor of theatre Landis' earlier, more comedic scenes are his strongest. He plays a foil to Mandel, who meets the challenge of playing the same guy three different ways. One grumble: in the final scene, his Michael Black character (the third clone) is a little too blithe, oblivious to some of the darker matters that Salter discusses with him.

A Number's matter-of-fact treatment of cloning will probably prove shocking only to fans of organized religion, who should fasten their bible belts and settle in for a bumpy, provocative ride. Otherwise, at $15 a ticket, the short running time, lack of set, minimal lighting, and ambiguous atmosphere may leave some audience members feeling shortchanged. But the free parking will help make it much easier to pay up for this quick fix of smart, stimulating theatre.