NT Number Begins Season of Satellite Broadcasts at Regent

A Disappearing Number premiered in Plymouth in 2007 and has since toured to New York, Mumbai, Milan, Sydney and Barcelona. The play has won numerous awards, including the Olivier Award for Best New Play (2008), the Evening Standard Award for Best New Play (2007) and the Critics Circle Theatre Award for Best New Play (2007).

A Disappearing Number weaves together the story of two love affairs, separated by a century and a continent. The first love affair happens now. The second is set in 1914. It tells of the heartbreaking collaboration between the greatest natural mathematician of the 20th Century, Srinivasa Ramanujan, a penniless Brahmin from Madras and his brilliant British counterpart, Cambridge Professor G H Hardy.

The play boasts a haunting original score by Nitin Sauhney and visual poetry by Simon McBurney, resulting in a compelling meditation on love and mathematics.

Later in this season, National Theatre Live will collaborate with the Donmar Warehouse, broadcasting its production of King Lear with Derek Jacobi from the Donmar on 3 February. Back at the National, Shakespeare’s Hamlet, directed by Nicholas Hytner, will be broadcast on 9 December; the musical Fela! on 13 January 2011; Danny Boyle’s production of Frankenstein on 17 March; and later in 2011, a new production of The Cherry Orchard, directed by Howard Davies, with Zoe Wanamaker as Madame Ranevskaya.