About the Author:
Caryl Churchill (1938-) is probably the most respected woman dramatist in the English-speaking world. She is the author of some twenty plays including Light Shining in Buckinghamshire, Cloud Nine, Top Girls, Serious Money, The Skriker, Blue Heart, Far Away and A Number, seen and admired all over the world. CARYL CHURCHILL's plays include "Cloud Nine" (revived in 2007 to huge acclaim at the Almeida, London), "Top Girls", "Serious Money", "The Skriker", "Blue Heart", "Far Away" and "A Number". Most are published by NHB.
Review:
A Number confirms Chuchill’s status as the first dramatist of the 21st century. On the face of it, it is human cloning Like all Churchill’s best plays, A Number deals with both the essentials and the extremities of human experience The questions of this brilliant, harrowing play asks are almost unanswerable, which is why they must be asked” Sunday Times
Caryl Churchill’s magnificent new play only last an hour but contains more drama, and more ideas, than most writers manage in a dozen full-length works.” Daily Telegraph
Caryl Churchill’s never stands still. After the dystopian nightmare of Far Away, she now comes up with a challenging new form of moral inquiry. And the key question she asks in this play is from what the essential core of self derives: from nature or nurture, genetic inheritance or environmental circumstance?” Guardian
Churchill’s harrowing bioethics fable leaves us with a number of things to chew on.” Kris Vire, Time Out Chicago
Stunning A Number, you see, is a gripping dramatic consideration of what happens to autonomous identity in a world where people can be cloned. The invaluable Ms. Churchill has not begun to stop surprising and unbalancing theatergoers. Since the 1970's this British dramatist has produced studies of a world quaking under constant siege in which style somehow always uniquely mirrors content. She has pondered mutations in gender (Cloud Nine) and language (Blue Heart), as well as the seismic disruptions of revolution (Mad Forest), civil war (Far Away) and environmental poisoning (The Skriker). She has now moved on to ponder a threat to the very cornerstone of Western civilization since the Renaissance: the idea of human individuality, a subject she manages to probe in depth in a mere hour of spartan sentences and silences. It is hard to think of another contemporary playwright who combines such economy of means and breadth of imagination.” -- Ben Brantley, New York Times
“A Number confirms Chuchill’s status as the first dramatist of the 21st century. On the face of it, it is human cloning... Like all Churchill’s best plays, A Number deals with both the essentials and the extremities of human experience... The questions of this brilliant, harrowing play asks are almost unanswerable, which is why they must be asked” – Sunday Times
“Caryl Churchill’s magnificent new play only last an hour but contains more drama, and more ideas, than most writers manage in a dozen full-length works.” – Daily Telegraph
“Caryl Churchill’s never stands still. After the dystopian nightmare of Far Away, she now comes up with a challenging new form of moral inquiry. And the key question she asks in this play is from what the essential core of self derives: from nature or nurture, genetic inheritance or environmental circumstance?” – Guardian
“Churchill’s harrowing bioethics fable leaves us with a number of things to chew on.” – Kris Vire, Time Out Chicago
“Stunning... A Number, you see, is a gripping dramatic consideration of what happens to autonomous identity in a world where people can be cloned. The invaluable Ms. Churchill has not begun to stop surprising and unbalancing theatergoers. Since the 1970's this British dramatist has produced studies of a world quaking under constant siege in which style somehow always uniquely mirrors content. She has pondered mutations in gender (Cloud Nine) and language (Blue Heart), as well as the seismic disruptions of revolution (Mad Forest), civil war (Far Away) and environmental poisoning (The Skriker). She has now moved on to ponder a threat to the very cornerstone of Western civilization since the Renaissance: the idea of human individuality, a subject she manages to probe in depth in a mere hour of spartan sentences and silences. It is hard to think of another contemporary playwright who combines such economy of means and breadth of imagination.” -- Ben Brantley, New York Times
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.