It could be any hospital ward, except there is no decoration or ornament except four identical plastic plants in identical pots on identical cupboards between identical doors. And there is no hint of the sinister purpose that it serves.
But this is an organ farm, a sort of abattoir of people, all cloned from who knows whom, to provide kidneys, lungs or hearts where needed. Their originators are referred to as ‘possibles’ or ‘others’, donation is treated as if it were an honour and death is given the euphemistic title of ‘completion’.
Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel, superbly adapted by Suzanne Heathcote, handles an enormously wide range of topics—hope, love, obedience, identity, memory—reflected in a running time of nearly three hours including an interval, but scrupulously avoids overt reference to the central moral dilemma of creating people whose sole function in life is to die in order that the ill may live.
The focus is elsewhere, on how those cloned individuals react to their predestination, as revealed in a series of flashbacks narrated by Kathy (Nell Barlow), a clone given extra years to work as a carer. Kathy is a sort of Pangloss, seeing the best in everything, the nurse one would want at a bedside, who can, even at the end of losing loved ones, avow how lucky they all have been. Barlow maintains an equanimity that makes one question whether she is an angel of mercy or one complicit in a great evil.
A sense of denial in fact runs through them all, Matilda Bailes’s Ruth fantasising about a future she will never have, Angus Imrie as Tommy, naïve, brittle and carrying a frightened look until love comes knocking.
All three young actors dig deeply into these trapped, psychotic personalities, chin-up not head down, as we witness them passing through giggling childhood, through cackling teenage sexuality and angst to a harvest-time maturity. How grateful these innocents are for their mercies, the broken toys given by outsiders, how ready to accept authorities’ lies.
Just occasionally, truth penetrates their shuttered, parallel world, a realisation that wretched people were paid or persuaded to be cloned to benefit others, or when they are harangued by a guilt-ridden tutor to face up to the suppressed fact that they would not live to fulfil even the most modest ambitions, that even to work in an office was an impossible dream. We know that they don’t know, and therein lies the poignancy of the situation.
Maximus Evans, making his professional stage debut, brings an edgy realism to the part of Phillip, the donor in Kathy’s care, and in a brief limelight appearance, Princess Khumalo as Laura brings to the fore the nervous undercurrent running through all those involved.
Heathcote keeps the long, 90-minute first half pacy by frequent cuts between Kathy’s narration and the events recalled, with Joshua Carr’s lighting helping to identify the different locations and Tom Piper’s set design built to accommodate burst of action.
The show transfers to Bristol on 5 November and Chichester on 26 November.