A Number: Old Vic
Fabulous to return to the Old Vic — even more fabulously they unexpectedly upgraded my cheap ticket for free so I had a much better view and seat!
It is a tough and yet tender play, encompassing fatherhood, personhood, cloning. Lennie James and Paapa Essiedu play father and son, who have experienced a disturbing situation — the son has been cloned and there are multiple versions of him running around the planet.
It starts off as one thing — father and son working through this situation; then becomes more of a thriller as the father meets one of the clones (or is he?) and becomes more complicit than appears. It also veers into areas of addiction and parental abuse as the father appears to have been less than fatherly to the son (who could be a clone or the original he didn’t want and sought to replace and begin again with). This version of the son is deeply traumatised and damaged and seeks revenge with bitter and murderous intentions — although played out in blank and angry ways.
It ends in an art gallery — the father having lost both versions of his son and meeting with one of the clones, who is balanced and laid back, but can’t provide the father with the answers he needs — perhaps his original child or the child of his imagination. As the audience, we begin to wonder who even was the ‘first?’
This two person play was intimate, emotional, deftly played. Paapa Essiedu was amazing — welling up with tears and fear as he sought to understand how much his father knew and what it means for him; (yet understanding apparently of his father’s feelings and emotions). Lennie James’s character has the potential to disgust and revolt as the play develops and yet he played such an apparently sincere and trustworthy part that we could seek to understand as he unraveled in lies, dissembling and potential abuse of his original child. When he talks about his wife not being well, we wonder how much his actions and behaviour were the cause of it? Are the clones sharing memories or are they experiencing individual, unique lives? Can we trust anything that the father says?
A play that leaves you thinking long after it is over.
