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Clones & clodhoppers
A Number, Hazzard County
BY IRIS FANGER
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British playwright Caryl Churchill’s prescient A Number neither needs nor gets a fancy production in its New England premiere at the Payomet Performing Arts Center in Truro’s tent at the side of Route 6 (through August 14). Set on a bed of gravel that crunches as you take your seat, the black-backed stage platform holds only a leather couch and a spiral coat stand that you later understand represents the intertwined strands of the double helix. In the chilling manner of Margaret Atwood’s A Handmaid’s Tale, and using the oblique and sinister language of Harold Pinter, Churchill unfolds her spare theatrical tale of a future when the cloning of human beings has become a plaything of scientists rather than the choice of individuals. If you think it’s difficult to tell a child he/she is adopted, how about telling your son he’s one of 21 walking the earth with identical genes? The premise is simple: Salter’s son Bernard has discovered he was created as a clone. Salter is by turns apologetic, angry, full of blame for the hospital staff, and finally broken by the consequences. During the 56-minute playlet, we meet two of the other "sons": Bernard the original child, who was given away at age four, and Michael Black. Suffolk University senior Nael Nacer gives each of the trio a different personality, suggesting the pre-eminence of nurture over nature. As Salter, Eric Parillo keeps his reactions locked within a rigid frame, revealing turmoil only through his eyes. Director Wesley Savick eschews gimmicks and accords the material the dignity it deserves. Churchill has packed A Number with enough ideas about the morality of cloning, father-son relationships, and the notion of each person as unique to fill a Dostoyevsky novel, never mind a brief evening in the theater. Back up the Cape, Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater offers another New England premiere, Allison Moore’s Hazzard County (through August 13). Directed by Daisy Walker and backed by set designer Dan Joy’s gritty depiction of a Red State family home, the play contrasts the clichés of Southern white trash with the presumptions of a Connecticut-born smart-ass TV producer. Moore pits a poor but honest (or so we think) widowed mother of twins against a dimwitted Fox Newsie who’s riding the back roads of Kentucky looking for a true story of American life. Kim Crocker and Jenny McClintock bring conviction to their roles; Casey Clark and Kristen Cerelli are saddled with the thankless tasks of playing the bratty children and delivering "pithy" commentaries on the meaning of the societal divide. You might want to check out reruns of The Dukes of Hazzard on CMT (or catch the new film), since that’s the redneck touchstone for the play.
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