It may be the second time in as many years that Caryl Churchill’s A Number has been performed in London, but it is a play that bears restaging, yielding greater insights every time you see it.
REVIEW ROUND-UP: A Number at the Old Vic Theatre
On LoveLondonLoveCulture, Emma Clarendon rounds up the reviews for the latest revival of Caryl Churchill’s two-hander A Number, now starring Lennie James at Paapa Essiedu at the Old Vic Theatre until 19 March 2022.
‘Caryl Churchill’s play has only gained in depth & gravitas’: A NUMBER – Old Vic Theatre
Paapa Essiedu and Lennie James deliver stunning performances in a cracking production of Caryl Churchill’s A Number at the Old Vic Theatre.
‘Sheer theatrical wonder’: WHAT IF IF ONLY — Royal Court ★★★★
WHAT IF IF ONLY – how many times must that have been said of a best beloved who has died. If only I had, what if this or that hadn’t happened?
‘Fascinating, challenging, probing theatrical experience’: BAD NIGHTS & ODD DAYS – Greenwich Theatre
Paul McGann and Kerrie Taylor, among others, shine in Bad Nights and Odd Days, a set of four short plays by Caryl Churchill at Greenwich Theatre.
NEWS: Royal Court Theatre announces its reopening programme
London’s Royal Court Theatre has announced its reopening programme, running from 16 June to 18 December 2021. Highlights include: seven methods of killing kylie jenner by Jasmine Lee-Jones, The Song Project created by Chloe Lamford, Wende, Isobel Waller-Bridge and Imogen Knight, Is God Is by Aleshea Harris, What If If Only by Caryl Churchill and Rare Earth Mettle by Al Smith.
NEWS: The Old Vic announces Back Together season
The Old Vic has announced its Back Together season, the seventh from artistic director Matthew Warchus, which will run from July 2021 to July 2022 and combines both streamed and live shows.
‘Feels particularly timely’: A NUMBER – Bridge Theatre
If the intimate play A Number feels a bit lost in the vast space of the Bridge, the performances are big enough to give it the required punch.
‘Short but superb’: A NUMBER – Bridge Theatre
A Number packs a lot of themes, meaning and ideas into just an hour of stage time in a production that asks big questions about scientific progress.
‘Excellent precision delivery’: FAR AWAY – Donmar Warehouse
Churchill’s vision two decades ago in Far Away now seems even more prescient and accurate of planet Earth’s downhill spiral: endless wars and realignments, climate change, imminent environmental catastrophe.
‘Pitch perfect’: FAR AWAY – Donmar Warehouse
Caryl Churchill wrote Far Away in 2000 and, 20 years on, it feels more current by the moment.
‘A beautifully imagined fantastical catastrophe’: FAR AWAY – Donmar Warehouse
This well-focused revival of Caryl Churchill’s, brief dystopic classic Far Away is vivid but frankly unexceptional.
‘Will surely soon be a contemporary classic’: THE GIFT – Theatre Royal Stratford East & Touring
New touring play The Gift from Eclipse is a wonderfully complex and emotionally powerful account of race and Empire.
‘Never really catches fire’: YOU STUPID DARKNESS! – Southwark Playhouse
A new play about optimism, You Stupid Darkness! is compassionate in conception, but repetitive and frustrating in performance.
20 shows to look forward to in 2020
Looking ahead to some of 2020’s exciting shows, most with an emphasis away from the West End and instead focusing at the London Fringe and across the UK.
NEWS: New shows at Bridge Theatre star Roger Allam, Colin Morgan & Simon Russell Beale, plus The Book of Dust & They Shoot Horses, Don’t They
New 2020/2021 productions at London’s Bridge Theatre will begin with Polly Findlay directing Roger Allam and Colin Morgan in Caryl Churchill’s play A Number at London’s Bridge Theatre.
‘A triumph in so many ways’: [BLANK] – Donmar Warehouse ★★★★
Jemima Rooper, Kate O’Flynn, Zainab Hasan and Joanna Horton carry a lion’s share delivering the vitriol, pain and helplessness of struggling women in [Blank].
‘Little thought is left for the content’: [BLANK] – Donmar Warehouse
Alice Birch’s experimental new play [Blank] prioritises form over content and is at heart depressingly reactionary.
‘Linguistically agile, theatrically pleasurable & emotionally dark’: GLASS. KILL. BLUEBEARD. IMP – Royal Court Theatre
Caryl Churchill’s Glass. Kill. Bluebeard. Imp. at the Royal Court is wonderfully bright and incisively perceptive.
‘Use of the grotesque & social critique is highly sophisticated’: GLASS. KILL. BLUEBEARD. IMP – Royal Court Theatre
As a body of work, Caryl Churchill’s four plays Glass. Kill. Bluebeard. Imp complement each other well and offer a bold social commentary that is dark, foreboding and surreal.