Monday, August 16, 2010

A Disappearing Number - a review of the play

Last week I attended a magnificent play at the NCPA, brought to India by the Prithvi Theatre group and ofcourse co-sponsored by Kingfisher Airlines.

It is a play about the mathematical genius Srinivasa Ramanujan and his English mentor G H Hardy. It is a play within a play because there are multiple stories across different time zones as well as different locations. A pattern of stories links people across time and space - Ramanujan to Hardy, a contemporary mathematician to Ramanujan, a businessman to this mathematician, an Indian diaspora travelling freely across the globe.

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

I particularly enjoyed the extensive use of technology and the simplicity yet complexity of the sets. The subject matter itself is so complex that it demands to be viewed more than once. A true "Matrix" like play. Overall it was a superb production and one of the best plays I have attended in India.

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