There is one number that looms large after watching this maths-based show: a big fat zero.

For there are no laughs, no talent, no wit and not a solitary ounce of joy to be had in this soul-sapping waste of an hour.

You might be expecting some sort of whimsical release of an inner nerd, a celebration of numbers, maths and algebra. Wrong. What you get is a deranged man shouting moronic nonsense at you for 50 minutes, and you can see that for free in any inner city street.

Simon Pampena is angry, that’s for sure. He sets out to be evangelical about mathematics with the fervour of a born-again believer, a point you get after 30 seconds, but is hammered home tediously. And Pampena has only two settings in his performance repertoire: yelling and screeching. It is relentlessly horrendous.

As for the subject he’s supposedly championing, all he manages to achieve is kindergarten explanation of the basics (the man had one ox and one ox and one ox – three oxen… and so addition was invented) and that’s the full extent of it. It’s would an insult to the intelligence of a remedial class of four-year-olds, let alone a bunch of adults geekish or adventurous enough to pay to see a show with 'mathematician' in the title.

There is, honestly, not a single joke in the whole pathetic thing, not even a fraction of one. Not just that it wasn’t funny, but I could only identify one point when it was even supposed to be funny – and, for the record, that’s when he alludes to the fact that the second word in the term ‘square root’ is Australian for sex. Yes, it’s quality stuff all right.

There is a happy-clappy song at the end of this miserable hour, celebration the number pi, which might just pass off as entertainment, but a double algebra lesson would still be more fun.

Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Melbourne, April 2005