Lunch time at the Fugard Theatre on the second day of rehearsal becomes press time, as I join Jonathan Munby and Timothy West in the green room (artists’ lounge) to chat about fathers and sons.
“Each time we’ve done it, we discover a bit more about it. It’s a very complicated text, but not, I hope, complicated for the punters who see it. But it is complicated for us because there are so many different colours you can read into each moment,” says Tim.
“Like with all good drama, it reflects who you are at the time that you do it. We’re different people, we’re older and we have had different experiences since we first looked at the play.
“Of course, it’s also different in terms of the audience,” says Munby.
Tim’s been in South Africa before, when he played Captain De Wet in Richard Attenborough’s Cry Freedom (1987) and he had a chance to travel around the country after that. He used to travel abroad extensively with big staged Shakespearean productions, but pared-down funding means that’s a thing of the past, though he does still travel occasionally for film shoots.
By this time Sam has joined us and he mentions that on the two occasions he’s travelled with a stage production, both of them were written by Caryl Churchill.
“It’s the first time I’ve ever revived a play twice and I think there’s a real pleasure in going back to something a second time. Also the freedom of going to another country.
“The critics and the audience you play to aren’t the ones you’re usually scared of. It’s like the classic line of going to the US to re-invent yourself,” says Sam.
Tim says he never wanted Sam to be like him, to which his son breaks out in laughter and says: “unlikely story.”
It turns out Sam, now 41, looks like Tim half a lifetime ago (dad turns 77 this month) and he was reminded of this one night when he turned on the tv and ended up recognising Sam in a random programme.
At first Tim started thinking it was a bit of a dodgy choice in costume, the lighting wasn’t done too well and, hopefully, Sam got paid: “Then I realised, it’s me… it was made about 40 years ago.”
They have played the same character on screen at different ages – Maurice – in Iris (2001) and Sam was the one who originally suggested his father be cast in the 2006 revival of A Number.
The play has nothing to do with physical appearance, but presents us with two characters who are identical, but have been treated in different ways and become completely different adults.
At the heart of the play, though, is not some philosophical questioning about nature versus nurture, but really a story about fathers and sons.
Munby says it’s far easier using a father-son combination because it was like starting in week five of rehearsal: “You get so much for free… the understanding and familiarity. It’s like starting with two actors who know each other really well, trust each other and, more than that, are fond of each other.
“The familiarity and under- standing the two have with each other not only makes my job easier, but it informs and enriches the play in a wonderful and fascinating way.”
The dialogue is very much like everyday casual conversation – some sentences don’t end and the people have their own shorthand, as families do.
“I think one learns one’s language from one’s parents initially.
“We tend to speak in quite a similar way, we have similar patterns of stress, work in similar ways. Because of the way the syntax of the play is so exploded and broken up, if we didn’t, I think you wouldn’t quite know what was wrong, but it would jar,” explains Sam.
He points out that the play also stresses an important principle for them as actors: “We’re always being encouraged, particularly by a certain type of tabloid, to think of people as evil or monsters, as if this is something you’re born with.
“As actors, having played our fair share of serial killers, or Nazis, or paedophiles, or people routinely called monsters and evil, you don’t necessarily have sympathy for what they’re up to, but you have to understand why they did it.
“Therefore you have to believe that what brought them to do it was a series of choices.
“If you believe there’s no evil, only choices, it makes it easier to do a play like this.”
While the physical characteristics are the least important part, Sam is still quite keen to see how South Africans respond to it.
“It’ll be interesting to do this in a country which in the past was segregated according to the colour of people’s skin because one of the arguments the play makes is that the similarities between people are much greater than the differences. The play finishes with the idea that we are 99 percent the same as any other person, genetically.”
lA Number starts tonight at The Fugard Theatre and runs until October 29. Check www.thefugard.com for the full schedule. Tickets from Computicket or at the door.