Theatre: A Number

Perth Theatre Company

Written by Caryl Churchill

Directed by Melissa Cantwell

Designer Bruce McKiven

Lighting designer Jon Buswell

Sound designer Peter Dawson

Featuring Kym Gyngell and Brent Hill

STC Studio until April 27

Kym Gyngell

There’s plenty of science fiction out there. In the Netherlands, in a re-created Palaeolithic ecosystem, scientists are reverse breeding to bring back extinct species like the auroch, the almost elephant-sized progenitor of modern cattle. From genetically modified harvests and barnyard clones to dinosaur DNA in glaciers, we are playing Dr Frankenstein with the matter that makes us. It seems more and more likely that the absurdly impossible is very possible indeed.

In Caryl Churchill’s A Number (first performed at the Royal Court in 2002 with Michael Gambon and Daniel Craig, and here revived by the Perth Theatre Company with Kym Gyngell and Brent Hill), a man approaching middle age discovers that he’s not alone in the world, that there are a number of hims out there.

A Number isn’t about the mechanics of cloning, or even its ethics per se, but the expectations parents and children have for each other, individual identity, the importance of trust for love and the mayhem that can erupt when it is shattered.

Be warned; this is no comedy, even of the blackest kind. A Number is a tough, testing story, made all the more confronting and thought provoking by the quality of its telling in this fine production. 

Link here to the complete review in The West Australian. My favourite reviewer in the whole world has also chimed in on A Number; link here and scroll down to page 64 for her take. 

Theatre: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

By Tennessee Williams
Black Swan State Theatre Company and Queensland Theatre Company
Directed by Kate Cherry

Designed by Bruce McKinven

Featuring Cheree Cassidy, Tom O’Sullivan, John Stanton, Carol Burns, Caitlin Beresford-Ord, Hugh Parker, Damon Lockwood, Daniel Murphy and Gina Williams

Heath Ledger Theatre, State Theatre Centre

Sept 10 – Oct 2, 2011

John Stanton and Carol Burns

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is an audacious, free-spirited American masterpiece given a clearly struck and handsome revival by director Kate Cherry in the centenary of its playwright’s birth. 

Its audacity lies in the almost complete elimination of plot and dramatic tension. The play takes place in real time in one room and, for almost all of its length, nothing consequential actually happens.

Even the one surprising thing that happens, Maggie’s startling announcement toward the play’s end, is unlikely to change these people or their lives, whether it is true or not.

Stripped of action and artifice, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is a universal human drama of need and repulsion, love, hatred and, above all, lies and truth.

Link here to the complete review in The West Australian