"Noether". Mathematical Institute. Review by Victoria Tayler
A play, like its subject, bursting with creative brilliance. Esme Somerside Gregory has written and directed something precious, touching, and truly necessary. I was completely ignorant of Emmy Noether’s life going in, yet a tastefully staged homage to her many, many publications over the years had me streaming tears. Yael Erez is the perfect casting choice: gently letting slip a world of academic wonder that bleeds out over the stage and infects its cast. You want to live in her reality forever. It’s not a kind reality. Noether’s life is marred by misogynistic academic boards and, of course, the crushing impact of Nazism. But Erez's Noether glides through it all, conjuring up a powerful subjective world of her own characterised by a love of learning and a radical commitment to kindness. She is maternal, in a way that feels genuinely agentic, choice rather than expectation. The careful writing highlights her Mr Keating-style fondness for her students as the anomaly in an ambivalent...
