What's On Review

If you told me a week ago that one of the most enjoyable shows I'd see this year had a maths lesson for a first half, I'd have probably laughed in your face. But that was before I'd seen Theatre of Science, an experiment to see if the popular science lecture, so popular in the 19th century, can still cut it as a hot night out in the theatre. Faraday and Davy used to draw huge crowds with their spectacular displays of electrical or chemical alchemy, though science hasn't always made for essential viewing - Newton's lectures were apparently so tedious, he'd generally end up pontificating to an empty room. Fortunately, Simon Singh and Richard Wiseman, the double-act who present Theatre of Science, are two of the most engaging boffins you could ever hope to meet. They may have all kinds of doctorates and professorships coming out of their ears, but physicist Singh is also a TV presenter and the best-selling author of books such as Fermat's Last Theorem, and Wiseman was an award-winning magician before he took up psychology - and they certainly know how to handle themselves in front of an audience.

Singh kicks off proceedings with an analysis of the deeper implications of mathematical probability. This sounds dreadfully dull on paper, but Singh pulls it off - principally by making the subject interesting, but also by cracking bad jokes, bantering with Wiseman who sits interfering in the audience, and even offering to buy the audience drinks if his demonstrations of probability don't work (the night I saw the show he came perilously close to forking out £200 in beer money - which certainly racked up the tension). But the tone becomes really quite serious as the impact some of this maths has on our lives becomes clear - for instance, would 0J Simpson really have got off so lightly if Singh had been around to deconstruct the trial defence's assertion that 'Only one in a 1000 abused women are killed by their husband'?

The generally more light-hearted second half consists of Wiseman demonstrating mankind's infinite capacity for self-deception, mixing jokes, close hand magic, a (mind boggling) film clip and some rather hi-tech, fancy looking lie detectors. While more action-packed than the first half, Wiseman's section still contains some troubling insights into the way we work - particularly when he relates the results of a TV survey he conducted in which secretly filmed shoppers were deliberately given back too much change to see what they'd do. It seems we're far more prone to lie than tell the truth.

All in all, though, this is an uplifting, thought-provoking and frequently hilarious alternative to the usual theatre fare. I look forward to live tours of the universe via deep space satellite link or fantastic voyages through the body using fibre-optic endoscopes (though considering the number of orifices available, that could be a bit painful). Whatever, I'm sure there'd be an audience for it.

Oliver Jones