There’s something rather pleasing about the casting of father and son Timothy and Sam West in this revival of Caryl Churchill’s slim but unsettling drama.
The fact that the two look increasingly alike adds an extra layer of significance to a story which, although ostensibly about the ethical questions of cloning, is equally about that simpler and yet much more complex issue, family ties.
West senior is Salter, a man who has to confront an act from the past when he is confronted by not one but three versions of his son, all played by West Junior.
The father is both evasive and yet filled with and uncomfortable mixture of guilt and bluster as he is forced to strip away the layers of untruth to reveal to all three how they came into existence.
The ‘brothers’ may look the same but are all distinct characters in their own right, with Sam West using just slight shifts of pose, voice and manner to create three unique personalities, all responding in different ways to a truth which leads to tragedy.
Jonathan Munby’s production is stark and simple, managing to be both contemporary and just faintly futuristic - though like all the best science fiction, it’s a future which is disturbingly like the world as we know it.
Its central theme may have been lifted straight from today’s tabloid headlines, though it’s a story that stretches into the distant past too and addresses those questions of sibling rivalry and parental attitudes that have been with us since Cain murdered Abel and Jacob cheated Esau.
Production information can change over the run of the show.
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