Mathematics of the Heart at Theatre503

Before I watched the play I had already fallen foul of some dodgy arithmetic, calculating from its title, the brief marketing blurb and its opening in the run up to Valentine’s Day that I was in for an attempted sexing up of the least sensual of all academic disciplines. Thus the opening scene had me somewhat disappointed. I was anticipating the play starting from where A Beautiful Mind left off, but instead was faced with an age old equation – the classic love triangle.

Dr Paul ‘doesn’t do surprises’  Macmillan (James Wallace), a jaded professor of chaos theory meets Zainab Zahiri (Bella Heesom) a bubbly, brainy and beautiful Ph.D student. Add anally retentive and uptight lawyer girlfriend Emma Fox (Isabel Pollen) and surely the audience know full well what this equals – a play about playing away, with some mathematical flirtation and geek chic to boot.

Thankfully, as the trajectory of Paul’s previously predictable life spirals off course, so do our preconceptions and those set up by the opening scene. Chancer (Mark Cameron), his erratic lovable rogue of a brother enters the stage in his boxers to classic reggae belter Double Barrel and steals the show from there on in, destabilising the love triangle through his (albeit slightly unlikely and unconvincingly pulled-off) liaison with young Zainab. Cameron really steals the show, giving real heart to the character who is a walking cliché – paternally neglected, failed musician, aging wild man and depressingly optimistic mess.

The language of storm prediction and mathematics shapes the script and the onstage action – I particularly liked the analogy of the two brothers, as swinging double pendulums, who for whom one small difference set in action makes them ‘totally different and utterly unpredictable’ as well as the significance of Paul’s ‘search for a constant’.

This underlying theme of mathematical prediction and human behavioural patterns is what freshens up otherwise hackneyed and well trodden terrain. Perhaps this is part of the point, as Emma is never late and Chancer has been in 23 bands without cottoning onto his own crapness, so playwrights (and soap opera producers for that matter) will continue to plough over tales in which the death of a father highlights ruptures in the sons, and where the girlfriend inevitably goes for the ‘naughtier’ brother because he is more sensitive.

Mathematics of the Heart accepts that we are all stereotypes yet delicately endows these typecast, pigeonholed humans with sincere depth and warm. It is a celebration of people’s inevitable consistency and predictability as much as it is an exploration of the impact of arbitrary and illogical spontaneity.

Mathematics of the Heart is showing until March 3 at:

Theatre503 at The Latchmere
503 Battersea Park Road
Battersea
SW11 3BW

Tel: 020 7978 7040

Photo: Simon Kane