A Disappearing Number

Firdous Bamji and Saskia Reeves, by Tristram Kenton

I think I fancy Simon McBurney. I’m ashamed to say that I didn’t know who he was until somebody mentioned that he was the terrifically “weasly” high commissioner in The Last King of Scotland. Having met a good few British high commissioners in African countries throughout my short life I was convinced of this man’s genius, or at least his astute observational skills. Of course, I am trying to make light of my total ignorance of his company Complicite, “Britain’s pre-eminent stage artists of the past two decades” according to the Times.

As an introduction to the company’s work, A Disappearing Number has left me joyfully overwhelmed, turning over thoughts in my mind, and seeing symmetries in everyday life, in the way that all the best art should. 

Not unlike Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia which jumped back and forth in time and explored human relationships alongside quantum theory, McBurney intertwines the world of mathematics with love, loss and history, weaving a story so thickly couched in ideas that you can’t help but be drawn in and get comfy. 

The story centres around the remarkable correspondence between mathematicians, Srinivasa Ramanujan and GH Hardy near the beginning of the last century, which is then layered with a romance between Ruth, who is a university lecturer in maths, and Al, who sees nothing in numbers and patterns. 

McBurney draws strongly on India for inspiration -  where numbers are more ingrained within the rhythm of daily life - drafting in the composer Nitin Sawney to create the production’s score. 
With atmospheric tabla music, clever use of projectors and screens, lighting, constant movement and sound, Complicite manage to create something somewhere between the ethereal and surreal but which still manages to approach the sheer…wonderful chaos of life. 

If the mere mention of maths and (gulp) infinite series has you breaking out in a sweat, consider this rather beautiful “mathematical truth”: 1 + ½ + ¼ + 1/8 + 1/16 + 1/32 never quite adds up to 2. 
It is always nearing 2, and gets very close to 2 but never quite is 2. 
Actually it does reach 2 but only in infinity.  Wherever that is. 

Ruth uses this particular sequence to explain to Al that even when in a couple, a man and woman are still separate entities. 
If that seems rather cold and well, mathematical she does, in a moment of happiness on discovering she is pregnant, proclaim that, “1 + 1 = 3”. 

We are taught that the arts appreciate beauty and that the sciences appreciate the facts but the message in A Disappearing Number is that this is not so. 

To come up with a theory, a mathematician has to make a stab in the dark, to use his imagination, what an artist may call “following his muse”. 
He does not have all the answers, but taking that considered leap of faith can result in a theory. 
A theory which then results in say, electromagnetic waves, which in turn results in your mobile phone, and which then could result in you hearing the voice of the person you love half way across the world. 
And that, if you care to look at it this way, is maths.

Okay, and yes, I do fancy Simon McBurney.

Claire Storrow

A Disappearing Number at The Barbican, Silk Street, London, EC2Y 8DS
www.barbican.org.uk

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