Brighton Festival Fringe – Mathematics of the Heart

Theatre shows in the Fringe Festival excelled this year, with Kefi Chadwick’s Mathematics Of The Heart a highlight, selling out in advance of its run at the wonderful Marlborough Theatre. A beautifully constructed play developed as part of Brighton Festival Artists’ Development, Mathematics… is about relationships between four protagonists whose lives, loves, hopes and dreams untangle over the 90 minutes.

Based on the ideas of Chaos Theory, Paul MacMillan is actually a doctor of Chaos Theory living in the shadow of his recently deceased father (himself a mathematics teacher), and whose life, along with his brother ‘Chancer’ and his girlfriend Emma, becomes as unpredictable and unstable as the weather patterns he studies. Performed in the round, with a minimalist set that involved the building of a boat made out of cardboard, it sailed along with skill and aplomb, with the traditional rules of theatre being gently manipulated such as the interplay with the sound tech and the subtle interaction between audience and performers.

Very funny, very poignant, and with real feeling and depth, all the actors excelled (particularly James Wallace who played the Doctor), creating new and meaningful twists and turns on this age-old study of faltering and then redeemed relationships.

Marlborough Theatre, 25 May
Jeff Hemmings

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