Prelude To A Number (Salford)

Geddes Loom have a fascination with maths, the number Phi aka The Golden Ratio and how it appears in every day life in many facets from credit cards to faces. In this piece Prelude To A Number they look at how it can be applied to music, poetry, theatre and visual design.

Three performers – Léonie Kate Higgins, Ben Mellor and Dan Steele all bring something different to the mix. Both Léonie and Ben sing and tell the stories, while Léonie also plays the cello and Ben is a beatboxer and slam poet. Dan is musician and sound technician rolled into one. The company describe themselves as falling somewhere between a band and a theatre company, while accurate unfortunately it isn't always conducive to a cohesive performance.

Mixed in with songs, some of which consist of just repetitive numbers and all of which are mostly repetition of the same lines or words, are three stories. The stories of Matt, a maths student, Leon, a stockbroker who's relationship is on the slide and Tessa, a young woman traumatised by a single event in her life, all of whom live their lives by their obsession with the golden ratio. But you never learn enough about these people to feel anything for them except to wonder at their behaviour and preoccupation with Phi.

Prelude To A Number feels like it wants to make maths and the theory of the golden ratio more interesting and bring it to the attention of more people, but in the end this show isn't entertaining enough to do so.

Prelude To A Number is at the Lowry until 14 February

– Helen Jones