ALL MY CHILDREN

Two plays take an anguished view of child-parent relationships.

The eternal struggle between parent and child is currently being given two very distinct treatments on Portland stages. The first, a play by a famed British playwright, tackles the topic of cloning in a two-hander between a father and son(s). The second, by a young Seattle writer, strives to bridge the gap of guilt and recrimination between a mother and her daughter who has committed a horrific act.

Caryl Churchill's A Number, in its American premiere at Imago, has been rightfully hailed as one of the first important attempts by an artist to bring an inevitable scientific advance up for public consideration. A young man, Bernard, discovers that there are multiple copies of him wandering the world. He seeks out his father, Salter, for an explanation, only to find that his father has been lying to him throughout his life. Bernard is actually Bernard-2, and his life takes an unfortunate turn when he collides at last with Bernard-1.

As frightening as this Churchillian future world seems, the playwright remains hopeful, holding onto the promise of nurture over nature. Even if carbon copies of ourselves were being generated, we would still have our own individual experiences. It is these that determine our singularity, rather than some Vogue pattern of genes.

As with all Imago productions, the play has been set on an inventive piece of staging, which we critics have sworn not to describe in print for fear of ruining the surprise (it is quite surprising). However, the performances of Tobias Andersen as Salter and Jerry Mouawad have not quite found the depth in Churchill's script yet. There's no psychological thrust in this production, whereas on the page the play reads like a fascinating mystery. Anderson and Mouawad exchange lines almost reflectively, which halts any dramatic development. Mouawad brings a touching bewilderment to Bernard-2, and Andersen is marvelous with Churchill's dark humor. Now all the two actors need to do is listen to the other.

Seattle playwright Amy Wheeler is gaining recognition outside of the Northwest. Her newest play, Weeping Woman, being premiered here by Stark Raving, melds the lives of filicidal moms Susan Smith and Andrea Yates, both experts in the art of drowning.

In Wheeler's play, the impact of a similar gruesome act is reflected in the lives of both the murderer and her mother. The weeping woman of the title is more Yates than Smith, and is, therefore, deserving of mercy and sympathy, two qualities her mother wrestles to achieve.

Directors Michelle Seaton and Stef Sertich (who marveled that this piece "ascended" their way) try to plumb past the surface of the two women's relationship but have forgotten one of the theater's golden rules: Self-pity doesn't play. There's a nice monologue from the mother (played by Mindi Logan) about giving birth to her daughter (played by Casey McDermott), and then some dramatic denouncements around a relationship between the girl and her stepfather. But a hinted-at Christ-mania that seems to propel the weeping woman toward tragedy (as it did Yates) is never examined satisfactorily.

A Number

Imago Theatre, 17 SE 8th Ave., 231-9581. 7:30 pm Thursdays, 8 pm Fridays-Saturdays, 7 pm Sundays. Closes Oct. 26. $21-$24.

Weeping Woman

Stark Raving Theatre at the CoHo Theatre, 2257 NW Raleigh St., 232-7072. 8 pm Thursdays-Saturdays, 7 pm Sundays. Closes Oct. 11. $10 (students)-$18.

WWeek 2015

Willamette Week’s reporting has concrete impacts that change laws, force action from civic leaders, and drive compromised politicians from public office. Support WW's journalism today.