A DISAPPEARING NUMBER. To 1 November.

London

A DISAPPEARING NUMBER
conceived by Simon McBurney developed by Complicite music by Nitin Sawhney.

Barbican Theatre To 6 October 2007.
returns 6 October-1 November 2008.
Mon-Sat 7.45pm (except15 October 7pm) Mat Sat & 30 October 2.30pm.
Captioned 25 Oct 2.30pm.
Runs 2hr No interval

TICKETS: 0845 120 7511 (booking fee)
www.barbican.org.uk/bite (reduced booking fee online).
Review: Timothy Ramsden 22 September 2007.

Exhilarating show where numbers really count.
Let’s hope Saskia Reeves did well in Maths at school. For remembering the complex formula she has to recite at high speed, and simultaneously write-out, at the start of Complicite’s latest show is a tough task even for someone with an inkling of how it all adds up.

Assuming she is doing it from memory. For, as Paul Bhattacharjee enters to point out, Maths is Maths but theatre’s full of tricks. He slides the scenery aside and adjusts Reeves’ vocal amplification to prove the point. Except the voice quality’s actually controlled from the rear auditorium.

So, almost 40 years after scientist and novelist C P Snow’s Rede Lecture defining the Two Cultures of Art and Science, Complicite shows the magic of theatre crammed with scientific devices and develops the wonder of Mathematics.

Snow’s name is briefly seen in this piece, as author of the introduction to an edition of Cambridge Mathematician G H Hardy’s Mathematician’s Apology. Hardy is involved in the story of Srinivasa Ramanujan, an Indian clerk who never saw a university till Hardy invited him to Cambridge following Ramanujan’s letter to him, reinventing the highest Maths of recent centuries before taking the subject into the future with ideas underlying modern explain-the-universe String Theory.

All that almost a century ago, before he died in his thirties. It turns Hardy’s world upside down; he’s seen working at all angles, and in a series of images alternating with Ramanujan. From it developed a friendship and ultimate sense of loss as keen as any romantic novelist might relate.

In a kind of parallel there's the modern story of English mathematician Ruth and American/Indian Al. He’s a futures dealer, a branch of finance where the future’s often created through guesswork and expectation. Love and loss collide here also.

Apparently irrelevant comedy, like Al’s attempt to deal with a BT call centre where Indian women pretend to be British, grows into the mesh of events. With its sweeping theatre technology, patterns of ideas and apparently low-key yet intense storytelling, this production is matched only by Robert Lepage at his best. It’s a thrilling experience.

Performers: David Annen, Firdous Bamji, Paul Bhattacharjee, Hiren Chate, Divya Kasturi, Chetna Pandya, Saskia Reeves, Shane Shambhu.

Director: Simon McBurney.
Designer: Michael Levine.
Lighting: Paul Anderson.
Sound: Christopher Shutt.
Projection: Sven Ortel for mesmer.
Costume: Christina Cunningham.
Literary associate: Ben Power.
Associate director: Catherine Alexander.

2007-09-24 12:11:45