The Limit – Vault Festival

The Limit continues as part of the Vault Festival, London until 10 March 2019.

Star rating: three stars ★ ★ ★ ✩ ✩ 

In the history of mathematics, a number of French names are prominent – both Laplace and Lagrange, contemporaries at the French Academy of Sciences, for example.

At the start of the 19th century, as with most sciences, the field was dominated by men. So when a teenage girl, Sophie Germain, found herself inspired by reading books in her father’s library, she found her path to a formal academic education stymied by dint of her gender.

Writers Freya Smith and Jack Williams have found an interesting woman to be the subject for their new musical, and have constructed a tale that weaves what little is known of her life among a tale that tweaks the facts to give their hour-long piece a dramatic structure.

Their best achievement is in the lead character herself. Nicola Bernardelle’s Sophie is a warm, engaging young woman, driven by her desire to learn but never failing to connect with the audience.

Would that the characters around Sophie were drawn with such care. Maybe it is out of fear that a musical about mathematicians may be too dry, but Smith and her co-director Alfie Taylor-Gaunt have created a world in which nearly everybody else is a one-dimensional caricature.

That is a shame, for Smith and Williams’ script contains much to amuse – but the overworked slapstick nature of the delivery never allows characters to feel fleshed out, which in turn minimises the threat to the protagonist.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the role of Siméon Denis Poisson. Jamal Franklin’s portrayal of the mathematician starts out as an endearing ally to Sophie, as part of a fiction by the writers which sees Sophie dress as a male to attend mathematical lectures.

During this part of the musical, Poisson is afforded some of the well-rounded writing given to Sophie. But after the (again fictional) reveal of Sophie’s true identity, the character recedes from the three-dimensional aura around the musical’s subject, reverting to a one-note villain despite Franklin’s best efforts.

Musically, Smith and Williams’ compositions suggest an affection for the Disney musical renaissance: one can detect the influence of Alan Menken in their light and airy melodic lines. Bernardelle and Franklin’s voices, in particular, work well together.

It feels as if Smith and Williams have hit upon the right story to tell. The depiction of Sophie as a woman who, in the face of male opprobrium, nevertheless persists has a relevance today. And if they can trust their story enough to allow all the characters to have the clear definition they have given to Sophie Germain, The Limit should deserve to be developed further.

Scott Matthewman