A Number at the Old Vic: ‘a devastating drama about paternal neglect’

Lyndsey Turner’s staging is ‘ignited’ by Lennie James and Paapa Essiedu

Lennie James and Paapa Essiedu on stage
Lennie James and Paapa Essiedu: ‘magnificent performances’

Caryl Churchill’s two-hander A Number is “one of the essential plays” of the century to date, said Susannah Clapp in The Observer. When it premiered in 2002, starring Michael Gambon and Daniel Craig as three iterations of his son, it tapped thrillingly into the debates then raging about cloning. But “long after Dolly the sheep has ceased to bleat” its themes still resonate.

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