A Number (NHB Modern Plays)

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 Ga... Read more

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 Less