Prelude to a Number

There are a whole clutch of shows at the Fringe this year looking at the patterns we trace to find meaning in the world: Chris Thorpe’s Confirmation, Standby for Tape Back-Up by Ross Sutherland, Ellie Stamp’s Are You Lonesome Tonight and now Geddes Loom’s Prelude to a Number.

Even that observation is an example of doing what humans do best and connecting the dots. As Geddes Loom put it, “you’ll find anything if you look hard enough”. The pattern they are hunting for is the golden ratio, a calculation that can apply to everything from faces to architecture. Over the years, it has been linked to aesthetic beauty and natural order, interpreted as a way of giving shape to the world.

Of course, once you know something’s there you see it constantly. This is the state of mind that Geddes Loom recreate on stage, intercutting songs and snippets of narrative in which various characters use the golden ratio to navigate a route through the chaos of life. One hears the same drum beat, recycled over and over, in all the songs he cares about; another grasps onto numbers when the rest of her world suddenly falls apart.

It’s all charming and smart enough on the surface, but scratch a little deeper and there is relatively little substance beneath these miniature stories of anarchy and order. Geddes Loom are a promising new company, but they could do with drawing more complex patterns than the ones found here.