"When the brain gets lost, it doesn't stop working. It tries to make sense of things. It begins to speculate and guess, and that's when things open up. That's exciting." -Simon McBurney, director of "A Disappearing Number"

The National Theatre Live's first venture beyond London and first collaboration with another company, Complicite's "A Disappearing Number," will be broadcast live from the Theatre Royal Plymouth and transmitted to Fairfield University's Quick Center for the Arts on Thursday, Oct. 14 at 2 p.m. There will be an encore presentation on Saturday, Oct. 16 at 2 p.m. This is an Arts & Minds presentation.

"A Disappearing Number , " conceived and directed by Simon McBurney opened in Plymouth in 2007 and received many awards. It has subsequently toured all over the world to New York, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Ann Arbor, Milan, Sydney, Barcelona and London to great acclaim. David Finkel of the Washington Post called it "A thrilling, thrilling, thrilling play" and Charles Isherwood of The New York Times dubbed it, "Quietly mesmerizing ... lucid, dynamic and continuously engaging."

A Disappearing Number weaves together the story of two love affairs, separated by a century and a continent. The first happens now. The second is set in 1914. It tells of the heartbreaking collaboration between the greatest natural mathematician of the 20th century, Srinivasa Ramanujan, a penniless Brahmin from Madras in South India, and his British counterpart, the brilliant Cambridge don G.H. Hardy.

With a haunting original score by Nitin Sawhney, this piece of startling visual poetry from McBurney and Complicite is a compelling meditation on love, mathematics and the pain of exile in an age when we think we can belong anywhere and have everything.

In a June 2010 New York Times article that anticipated a brief run of the play at the Lincoln Center Festival in July, Jason Zinoman noted that McBurney "specializes in turning difficult material ... into gripping shows characterized by a fluid, dreamlike and highly theatrical visual ingenuity ... with his latest work, perhaps more than any other, he sees difficulty as part of its artistic mission: to capture the creative thrill of solving a problem."

The London press anointed the ensemble saying the play is "Marvelously acted and often deliciously comic piece ... A Disappearing Number is a wonder and one I cannot recommend too highly," Daily Telegraph; The Independent called it "Mind-bending and heart-stopping."

Tickets are $22 general, $20 seniors, $15 children and students and are available at fairfield.edu/quick or by calling the Box Office at (203) 254-4010. The toll free number is 1-877-ARTS-396. Special offers and discounts are available through the Quick Center's e-mail list. Join by contacting boxoffice@quickcenter.com . And become a fan of the Quick Center for the Arts on Facebook! Keep up-to-date with the latest performance news, plus special offers and discounts! Find the Quick Center at www.facebook.com/FairfieldQuickCenter.

National Theatre Live is distributed internationally (ex-UK) by New York-based BY Experience: www.byexperience.net . Global sponsor for National Theatre Live is Aviva, an innovative insurance company with a global presence.

Directions: Fairfield University is located off I-95, exit 22 at 1073 North Benson Road, Fairfield, CT 06824. Access to the Quick Center for the Arts is through the Barlow Road gate at 200 Barlow Road.

Posted On: 09-23-2010 10:09 AM

Volume: 43 Number: 52