GEOFF BOTTOMS relishes a profoundly human portrait of a family as it evolves across 55 years in Sheffield
The perils of carrying our deficiencies into any ‘brave new world’
OUT OF SYNC: Lennie James as Salter the father and Paapa Essiedu as one of the three sons
[Manuel Harlan]
PAUL DONOVAN applauds an excellently crafted new musical that explores the life and death of Ruth Ellis
PAUL DONOVAN is tickled by the excruciating take-downs of one of the funniest, wittiest, political writers around.
RON JACOBS points out, via a transcription of Kissinger’s secret recordings, that Trump could never have existed without Nixon and Kissinger
ELLIS RAE is persuaded that the advantages of the ‘talking cure’ are superior to the treatment of mental illness with drugs
JOHN GREEN, MICHAL BONCZA and BELLA KATZ review The Good Boy, Broken English, and Don't Be Prey
A Number
Old Vic
CLONING has often been thought a subject best left for sci-fi, but at the turn of the 21st century — when Caryl Churchill’s play A Number was first staged — the prospect of humans being cloned was raised after a Finnish-Dorset sheep named Dolly became the first mammal to be cloned from an adult cell.
Now 20 years later, and the politics of our DNA has taken centre stage again with companies like 23andMe offering a full breakdown of your genetic makeup from a saliva sample. As if Silicon Valley doesn’t have enough of our data.
But if A Number is on one level a warning sign about the drawbacks of human cloning, it is many other things beside. It’s also a timeless analysis of nature vs nurture, and the complex relationship between a father and son.
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