Writers Theatre presents A NUMBER Review: chilly math, blazing hearts

We learn that the father, Salter, was so grieved by the sudden death of his toddler son years earlier, he consented to cloning the boy. But instead of one replacement, there are now over 20 versions of Bernard. “I don’t want a number of sons,” declares Salter. “One is plenty.” Salter debates suing the scientists responsible for the overreach. But for how much? A half million, a million? What precisely is the value of an individual life?

A NUMBER’s mysterious conundrum

Before he files any lawsuits, however, Salter must deal with his own actions on a personal level. And that means direct confrontations with sons whose identical DNA does not mean identical personalities. The first Bernard is reflective and insecure; the second riddled with resentment and darkness; the third genial and contented if not exactly the brightest penny. Salter finds himself dealing with all of the variations in rapid succession.

William Brown as Salter and Nate Burger as the three Bernards play out this brainteaser adroitly. In this writer’s view, Robin Witt directs the series of scenes as sharp punches, each one pulling us farther and father into A NUMBERS’ mysterious conundrum. Clouded by memory and emotion, Salter keeps shifting his account of what exactly happened. The sons’ recollections of childhood provide equally differing accounts of the past.

Humor erupts from time to time, as when Bernard points out that humans share 98 percent of the same DNA as chimpanzees – and 30 percent as a head of lettuce. It’s a welcome release of tension, although that doesn’t do much to blunt the horror of the situation and its violent outcome.

WRITERS THEATRE’s unsparing production

Much as the father-son encounters are intimate, Writers Theatre’s unsparing production of Churchill’s script keeps us at a distance. That’s probably the safest place to be. The math of cloning is chilling but the hearts beneath the science blaze with emotion. Salter’s pain at losing his son feels as fresh as the day it happened; so does the pain of the confused offspring who were created to alleviate it. Full of sentiment yet entirely unsentimental, A NUMBER will engage those eager for an intellectual challenge built on human relationships.