Complicite’s Number Reappears for Three Weeks

Audiences will have a second chance to catch Complicite’s A Disappearing Number this autumn. The multi award-winning play returns for a three-week encore season at the Barbican Theatre from 10 October to 1 November 2008.

Conceived and directed by Complicite artistic director Simon McBurney and set to original music by Nitin Sawhney, the piece takes as its starting point the story of the collaboration between 20th-century mathematicians Scrinivasa Ramanujan, a poor Brahmin from southern India, and Cambridge don GH Hardy.

A Disappearing Number won a hat trick of Best New Play prizes this year, at the Evening Standard, Critics’ Circle and, last month, at the Laurence Olivier Awards (See News, 9 Mar 2008).
Accepting the Olivier on behalf of McBurney, Complicite producer Judith Dimant said that “this was the longest, hardest play” the company has ever made.

A Disappearing Numberwas first seen last September in a sell-out, month-long premiere season at the Barbican, when the cast included Saskia Reeves and Paul Bhattacharjee.

The new London dates – for which casting has not yet been announced – are part of a 2008 international schedule which, if sufficient funding can be raised, may include India.

– by Terri Paddock