Character Analysis

Phil: The Silent Controller

Phil is the most powerful character in DNA, yet he speaks less than anyone. For much of the play, he sits in a field eating — an ice cream in Act 1, a muffin in Act 2, a waffle in Act 3. These recurring motifs of consumption make Phil appear absurdly calm while chaos surrounds him. His silence is not ignorance; it is control. When the group panics and asks “What are you going to do?” Phil waits, thinks, and then delivers instructions with chilling precision.

Phil’s plans are always effective. He frames an innocent man in Acts 1–2, orders Adam’s killing in Act 3, and in each case the group obeys without question. But Kelly never reveals Phil’s inner life. We do not know if he feels guilt, satisfaction, or nothing at all. He explains himself to nobody, and this opacity is what makes him so disturbing. He may be a calculating manipulator or a teenager so emotionally shut down that cruelty comes without feeling. By Act 4, Phil has withdrawn entirely — his silence now emptiness rather than power.

Key Fact

Phil controls the group through silence and minimal speech. His calm eating while others panic, his cold, step-by-step instructions, and his refusal to engage emotionally make him the play’s most powerful and most opaque character. By Act 4, this silence has become emptiness.

Leah: The Moral Conscience

Leah is Phil’s opposite: she never stops talking. Her monologues about bonobos, happiness, and the nature of friendship are the play’s most philosophical passages. She poses the central question — “We share more of our DNA with bonobos. But we choose chimps” — and she is the only character who consistently questions whether the group’s actions are right. She threatens to set fire to herself to provoke a response from Phil, revealing the depth of her desperation for his acknowledgment.

Yet Leah never acts. She knows what is right but does not go to the police, does not refuse to participate, does not leave the group. “You need me,” she tells Phil, but he does not. Kelly presents Leah as proof that moral awareness without moral courage is useless. Her disappearance in Act 4 — unexplained, abrupt — is the logical consequence of a conscience that nobody listens to. She represents the audience’s own discomfort: we see the wrong but do not intervene.

John Tate is the group’s first leader, and his failure sets the pattern for everything that follows. When news of Adam’s apparent death reaches the group, John Tate tries to take charge through denial and intimidation. He bans the word “dead”: “Alright. New rule; that word is banned.” But controlling language does not control reality, and his authority collapses as the group recognises he has no plan.

John Tate’s weakness creates the vacuum that Phil fills. If John Tate had been a competent leader, the group might have confessed or found a less destructive solution. Instead, his collapse demonstrates that leadership based on bluster rather than competence will always fail under pressure. By Act 4, John Tate has “found God” — swapping one form of authority for another, still unable to think for himself.

Cathy: The Sociopath

Cathy is the play’s most overtly dangerous character. While others follow Phil’s orders reluctantly, Cathy follows them with enthusiasm. She enjoys being interviewed by a TV reporter about the “missing boy.” She finds the postman whose DNA will frame him. She helps to kill Adam when Phil orders it. Each act of cruelty is escalation, and Kelly makes clear that Cathy was never coerced — she was waiting for permission. By Act 4, she has replaced Phil as leader, completing the play’s darkest trajectory.

Richard, Adam, and the Chorus

Richard is the closest the group has to an everyman figure. He is uncomfortable with the cover-up and anxious, but he never leaves or acts on his discomfort. In Act 4, he takes Leah’s position in the field, talking to a silent Phil — the cycle repeating. Richard shows that doubt without action changes nothing.

Adam is the play’s absent centre. He is talked about constantly but barely appears. When he does, he is silent and broken. Kelly presents him as the ultimate victim — first bullied, then assumed dead, then killed when he is found alive. The group treats him as a problem, never as a person. His silence contrasts with Phil’s: where Phil chooses silence, Adam has had his voice taken from him.

Mark and Jan function as a modern Greek chorus. They appear in the street scenes, finishing each other’s sentences and relaying information to the audience. Their dialogue is fragmented and rapid — they interrupt and overlap, creating a breathless sense of urgency. They are not major decision-makers but narrators who report what has happened.

Kelly uses Mark and Jan to control the audience’s access to information. We learn about Adam’s bullying, the cover-up, and the group’s fate through their reports. Their increasing detachment as the play progresses — reporting atrocities in the same tone they used for gossip — mirrors the group’s moral numbness. They are also complicit, because reporting events without condemning them is its own form of silence.