The words of the title, “A Number,” are the first spoken in British playwright Caryl Churchill’s new play. The terse and overlapping Mamet-like dialogue involves two characters, father and son. Gradually, as the scene unfolds one becomes aware of the meaning of two simple words.
“You say there’s a number?” asks dad. “How many, exactly? There was only supposed to be one.”
Bernard (Francis Gercke) has just told his father, Salter (D.W. Jacobs), that he’s discovered there are others, his genetic twins, evidently the fruits of a mad scientist’s dream scheme to study the similarities and differences of cloned individuals, allowing him to determine whether it’s nature or nurture that makes us who we are.
Great and timely premise, eh?
So far as production values and quality are concerned, we could not be in better hands. Esther Emery stages the brief play with edge-of-your-seat intensity. The extraordinary young director makes her Old Globe Theatre directorial debut later this year. She has staged “Yellowman” and “Revolving Doors” at Cygnet.
Churchill invites her audience to explore. The actors provide the suspense.
Gercke is a coiled spring as the son; Jacobs, steady as the well-intentioned father.
Gercke is founding and former artistic director of New Village Arts Theatre. He’s been seen at Cygnet in “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” and “Desire Under the Elms.” He also directed Cygnet and NVA’s co-production of “The Curse of the Starving Class.”
Jacobs’ most recent local appearance was in Moxie Theatre’s production of Chuck Mee’s “Limonade Tous les Jours.” Also a playwright and teacher, he is the co-founder and former artistic director of San Diego Repertory Theatre and writer/director of the widely produced “R. Buckminster Fuller: The History and Mystery of the Universe.
Creators of the physical production of “A Number” do great work: Jungah Han’s living room-and-beyond set, Matthew Novotny’s amazing palette of lights and George Ye’s otherworldly sound design are memorable. All contribute to one’s the sense of being on the frontier of science and the edge of emotional issues involved in cloning of humans.
The observer truly cares about Bernard’s rainbow of emotions as he becomes increasingly confused, angry and disillusioned. His loving father has lied to him about the reasons and circumstances surrounding his coming into being. And then ” but to say more would spoil your experience. Suffice it to say that during the brief play’s two subsequent scenes, Churchill explores her personal theories regarding the situational/moral/ethical dilemma. No doubt she expects her work to continue, larger in one’s after-curtain deliberations than it was in span of time. The reviewer fulfils her hopes. “A Number” is not a shallow play, though I left feeling that it was slight, that there was more Churchill might have done. Perhaps she intends each of us to complete the Gestalt by exploring the frontiers of our own feelings.
I’ve longed for a clone of my dog, Peaches, ever since I learned such things are possible. Long ago, my late son and I discussed the then-remote idea that one day science would allow him to clone and raise me.
He was distraught at the idea of my preceding him in death. Alas, he preceded me, so the pain was mine. If I could clone a gentler, easier Bob than he, would I?
“A Number” continues at 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday, and 2 and 7 p.m. Sunday, through June 29 at Cygnet Theatre, 6663 El Cajon Blvd.
For tickets and information, visit www.cygnettheatre.com or call (619) 337-1525.

Parental Cycle
Bittersweet, today.
You expressed the hope
that immortality might be discovered
before it’s time for me to die,
and I recalled for you the pain
when I first knew my mother’s transiency;
how it feels now to realize
at the outside, life’s half done.
I know,
you’d clone me if you could,
raise me from infancy.
How would I turn out?
Would you even like me as a child?
Be proud?
I’ve always been so strong for you ”
it was expected ”
but near my end, perhaps,
should there be a certain frailty,
you may yet have the chance to parent me.
” Charlene Baldridge