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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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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Together, [Essiedu] and James immaculately capture the rhythm of Churchill’s writing, all the little hitches, lulls and sentences left hanging. [Turner] draws more humour out of the play than one might expect.
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Together, [Essiedu] and James immaculately capture the rhythm of Churchill’s writing. [Turner] draws more humour out of the play than one might expect.
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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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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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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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'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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