A Number (Old Vic) London Reviews and Tickets
About the Show
Production Covid-19 Safety ProtocolsMember Reviews (2)
See it if You enjoy Sci fi and questioning inner dilemmas.
Don't see it if You don't want to think too much.
See it if you like shows that you can't stop thinking about long after leaving the theatre.
Don't see it if you're just looking for some light entertainment.
Critic Reviews (10)
Paapa Essiedu gives a tour de force performance. Lyndsey Turner’s production contains some harsh laughs and exerts a chilly and slowly closing grip, helped by Es Devlin’s boxed-in set.
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Essiedu is wonderful in all three roles. Turner’s taut production keeps things minimal, with Es Devlin’s box set an apartment painted entirely in a monochromatic, womb-like red. [This is] an epic tale of a father’s horrifying failure compressed into a single hour.
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This production offers something of a fresh slant, but still winds up feeling ... surplus to requirements. Churchill’s sparse text carries a phenomenal charge of self-centred parenting, insinuated abuse, and resultant resentment ... That doesn’t carry across here.
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Lyndsey Turner’s production ... turns this strange, elliptical play from a thought experiment into a flesh and blood tragedy of family reckoning. Essiedu is astonishing to watch ... In his hands, this is the story of a son’s identity crisis. But James wrestles it back to make it one of toxic fatherhood, too.
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'A Number' ultimately has the air of the first act of an unfinished play. If the script continually leads us down blind alleys, it’s still possible to admire Essiedu’s deft shifts in register, from confusion and resentment to bland good cheer.
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This production ... feel[s] so emotionally pressing that it is almost suffocating to watch. It's Churchill's genius that she can combine the comic and the tragic in a single scene; this production serves her vision superlatively.
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James brilliantly locates that landscape in the play where language leaves off and grief and remorse take over. I left the theatre punchdrunk with admiration at the embrace of human mystery.
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Lyndsey Turner’s well-paced production honours the philosophical and science fiction elements of Churchill’s play while simultaneously exploring more grounded ideas. But it feels excessive to also have chaotic classical music between scenes and a blinding flash of light ... which ... hauls us out of the performance.
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