“Caryl Churchill, among the fiercest and boldest of Britain’s modern playwrights, goes nearly as hard about identity in A Number as she’s gone in other plays about sociopolitical upheavals (Mad Forest and Far Away) and sexual politics (Cloud 9 and most famously Top Girls) — big-swing, big-think exercises all of them, none as interested in providing answers as suggesting the endless complications involved in opening the questions.”
Or at least so says some wise-ass in The Washington Post this week:
I come not to boast, but to whine. Because writing short about a play like A Number is way more work than it ought to be.1 Not that I haven’t had practice: If you know me well, you know I worked as a writer and editor at USA Today for half a decade, writing both punny headlines and tight-bright paragraphs for the Lifeline column, not to mention the occasional tech and theater story. An 8-inch2 theater review was the norm for us, and my colleague David Patrick Stearns taught me all kinds of less…
