A Disappearing Number

Synopsis

Simon McBurney takes as his starting point the heartbreaking story of one of the 20th Century's most important mathematicians - a poor Brahmin from South India - a man who dreams of India, and an Indian physicist who dreams of the future. It's a show that spans two continents and explores the dreams of our new nomadic society.

Our Review:

12 September 2007

The mystery of mathematics for most of us means memories of algebra lessons at school, or the dismay with which we learned that, having scraped through O-Level maths by two marks, there loomed another O-Level hurdle of additional maths (I fluked that, too, by one mark).

But the mystery of maths at the highest level turns out to be a thing of real beauty in A Disappearing Number, Simon McBurney’s intriguing, very beautiful new show for Complicite, co-produced with the Barbican, Theatre Royal Plymouth, and festivals in Vienna and Amsterdam.

The hinge is the remarkable friendship, around the First World War, between the Cambridge mathematician GH Hardy, who believed that mathematicians were only makers of patterns, like poets and painters, and the Brahmin vegetarian autodidact Srinivasa Ramanujan. The air of magical contrivance is sustained by encasing this friendship in the expositions of a narrator physicist and a Hardy disciple many years later.

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Latest User Review

Gareth James - 21 September 2007:

Where on earth does Simon McBurney get his ideas from? The unlikely source material somehow delivers 2 hours of invention and theatricality that would be sufficient to keep a handful of West End shows alive.....and great to see Saskia Reeves again after what seems like ages. Anyone with a genuine interest in the theatre should be at the Barbican....

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