Samuel West - Theatre - A Number

[updated 19 March 2011]

Sam and his dad Tim are in a Sheffield production of A Number by Caryl Churchill. After its run at Sheffield it will play for a few nights at the Chichester Festival Theatre (info here)

Reviews

The Times
"Timothy West, a grizzled old bear tied to a stake of his making, gives a fine performance... he’s matched by Samuel... Whatever the play’s troubling uncertainties, one thing is certain: the West dynasty thrives."

The Stage
"There’s something rather pleasing about the casting of father and son Timothy and Sam West in this revival of Caryl Churchill’s slim but unsettling drama."

Independent
"Jonathan Munby's superlative revival of this two-hander in the Studio at Sheffield's Crucible Theatre boasts a casting coup. A play in which a father confronts, in a succession of separate encounters, three (of 21) cloned sons here stars the real-life father-son combination of Sam West (the Crucible's artistic director) and his pater, Timothy West."

BBC
"not a second is wasted as real life father and son Timothy and Sam West look at the fragile relationships between fathers and sons...both actors excel in this play"

Guardian
"the play asks how anyone can ever prove to himself that he's unique. The questions could hardly be more acutely put than they are here, where nimble father and son tumble in and out of each other's sentences as if they were part of the same paragraph."

[another review]
"Samuel West gives compelling and nuanced performances as the anxious younger Bernard and the damaged elder one, and offers a third version of reality as the happily married teacher.
Timothy West is excellent too as the evasive Salter, a man who sometimes seems like a granite wall blocking everything out and at others like a bewildered walrus blinking into the abyss."

Pictures

Tristram Kenton/The Guardian
Manuel Harlan/BBC

Links

More at the Sheffield Theatres site [link]
Interviews with Sam and Tim 1|2