Brand-new theatre company That Theatre Company has a deceptive provocation to share with Toronto audiences. Their debut show, Caryl Churchill’s A Number is just an hour long: slender-seeming, but packed with steely substance. The subject of the 2002 play is cloning – and in the space of the atmospheric, 80-person capacity St Anne’s Hall – the time flies.
The play stars two actors. Veteran Jim Mezon is Salter, a father who is indignant, hurt and confused – having discovered that his son has been cloned. But there are layers here . . . Salter is also by turns wheedling, ingratiating, obfuscating. “What’s the real story here?” we wonder.
Mezon’s brittle bravura performance – stiff, shuffling movements paired with dazzling vocal range – navigates a long distance plot-wise . . . and unexpected depths character-wise.
Craig Pike, Founder and Artistic Director of That Arts Group, plays more than one of Salter’s offspring. Ahhh, but which ones? We are kept off-balance as we try to determine this. We watch Pike’s simple wardrobe changes, and the shifts in his verbal cadence and how he holds himself. We pay close attention to each child’s nuanced and surprising story — and the shifting accounts of their relationship with the other offspring. There are no acting pyrotechnics here: Pike’s performances grab us with intensity, authenticity and nuance.
In combinations choreographed expertly by Director Severn Thompson, this perfectly-matched pair joust verbally for the entire hour. Their dialogue tumbles through twists and turns that unexpectedly – and with unexpected regularity — disgorge plot bombs. Each time, while the fuse burns down on its incendiary implications, we track a staccato burst of accusations and retractions; sudden and generous concessions (or are they empty, performative phrases?) and glimmers of deeper, rawer emotion.
Above all, we track the pair’s questions: weighty questions that lie at both the center of the cloning debate and the core of their father-son dialogue:
- Are you made . . . or do you make yourself?
- Do you have choice . . . or is it all “programming”?
- Is “identity” individuality . . . or sameness?
- Is relationship about me? Or you?
The audience sits in rows of chairs that line three of the four walls of the snug theatre space. The fourth wall shows periodic projections that are evocative but unexplained. Designer Steve Lucas’ set is sparse and simple: just four chairs around a kitchen table that is positioned at 45 degrees — like a diamond within the theatre’s square space. All the angles are “off”, so the seated actors never face a row of audience members directly.
As we watch and listen, we sit in the exact same type of chair as the characters. It’s a function of this theatrical space, but also a brilliant choice to eliminate distance. Ultimately, this site-specific performance of A Number feels less like watching a show than engaging in an unapologetic act of full-contact eavesdropping.
The cloning premise and Heid Chan’s brilliant sound design give this minimalist theatrical experience a Body Snatchers-style intensity – which culminates in an ending that is left unsettlingly open.
Those weighty questions which earlier seemed aimed solely at the children of cloning? We’ve by this point seen them rebound to challenge the father. And before we can make a clean escape, their tendrils are grabbing at our legs, poking at our thoughts, and interrogating our identities.
A Number runs until May 7, 2023 at St Anne’s Hall, 651 Dufferin Street, Toronto, ON. Reserve tickets on eventbrite.ca.
© Scott Sneddon, SesayArts Magazine, 2023
