A DISAPPEARING NUMBER by NUS Stage

“Imitation game”

Reviewer: Edward Eng
Performance: 15 March 2019

Little adds up in Edith Podesta’s staging of Complicite’s A Disappearing Number. Several ideas on mathematics and how it manifests in love, history and mortality are visited superficially but nothing more.

The play pulls together two stories: in 1913, English mathematician G. H. Hardy invites an Indian clerk named Srinivasa Ramanujan to work with him when he discovers Ramanujan has an eye for the mathematical sublime. Meanwhile, an American fund manager (Pavan Singh) falls in love with a university lecturer (Koh Wan Ching) after he attends her lecture on sequences and series in present-day Brunel University in the UK.

Fictional physicist Aninda Rao (Remesh Panicker) narrates. He draws links between the two stories, which at heart are both about love.

The interweaving narrative tinkers on rendering the invisible world through a kaleidoscope which, if handled well, would allow the burning core of the drama to shine. But Podesta’s version seems to squander most of her resources on unnecessary theatrical devices.

If it sounds complex, it sure is. Tabla drums – admittedly well-textured and often stirring – are played live (Nawaz Mirajkar) to set the scene. The good ensemble from NUS Stage, the sound samples (Teo Wee Boon) and lighting atmospherics (Suven Chan) further nudge the world into shape. Brian Gothong Tan’s projection adds something as well.

But the stagecraft is distracting to say the least. The various elements fight to say the same thing, and often end up sounding like odd imitations of each other.

It is also detrimental that the main characters are less interesting than the supporting cast from NUS Stage. This is partly because the main cast gives only serviceable performances.

I also enjoyed the little riffs on how numbers surface in everyday interactions. In one recurring scene where the fund manager talks to a BT mobile call centre staffer, for instance, numbers unravel across time, space and social condition. Scenes like this actually end up being much more fascinating than the main storyline.

They remind me of a similar story about how people see beauty in the abstract: Hayao Miyazaki’s The Wind Rises breathes life into warplane designer Jiro Horikoshi using moments that do not explicitly further the plot. The difference is that The Wind Rises folds all its dramatic elements into each other seamlessly.

Podesta’s direction, on the other hand, leaves bits and bolts sticking out. There are these huge screens that go up and down, and their sheer size makes the device clunky. Accents and intentions are also oddly chosen: some of the cast feel like they want to be Indian and they want to like maths. That disappointed me the most.