Threading time together

Complicite’s A Disappearing Number is set to arrive at the Sydney Theatre, jointly presented by the Sydney Opera House, with its debut on Wednesday 19 November.

It’s been described in the British press as one of the most densely woven, intelligent and moving pieces of theatre of the past 20 years, and Australian critics are likely to have a similar response.

This diverse production has music composed by the award-winning Nitin Sawhney, which includes live Indian tabla music. Guided by the visionary director Simon McBurney, the show frames the past, the present and the future.

McBurney has shaped the production by using the true story of the First World War partnership between the great English mathematician G. H. Hardy and the young Indian self-made mathematician, Srinivasa Ramanujan.

During the foundation stages, he interweaves the imagined tale of a latter-day maths professor, Ruth and her husband, Al, as he attempts to comprehend the beauty she finds in maths.
It’s a complex script but draws the audience in as the dialogue unfolds.

A Disappearing Number takes as its starting point the story of the most mysterious and romantic mathematical collaborations of all time, McBurney told Sydney Star Observer.

Simultaneously a narrative and an enquiry, the production crosses three continents and several histories, to weave a provocative theatrical pattern about our relentless compulsion to understand.

Threaded through this pattern of stories and ideas are questions. About mathematics and beauty; imagination and the nature of infinity; about what is continuous and what permanent; how we are attached to the past and how we affect the future; how we create and how we love.

Sydney is the last date of the 2008 international tour, which has taken in Barcelona, Michigan, Paris, London and Milan.

info: Complicite’s A Disappearing Number is at the Sydney Theatre, Walsh Bay for a limited season. Tickets start at $65. Bookings on sydneyoperahouse.com or 9250 7777.