I don’t envy Simon Pampena’s position. Here’s a guy attempting to do something unnatural on stage: make maths funny. It’s novel, it’s quirky, but does it succeed?

A mathematician by day, a frizzy haired revolutionary by night, Pampena’s enthusiasm must be admired. He kick starts the show with a bombastic song and dance, but within seconds the mystery behind the ‘How can maths be funny?’ question is all but revealed. Pampena’s stand-up adheres to a singular joke theory: a daggy affection for arithmetic. And that’s where the joke ends.

Helped by background diagrams and punctuated with evangelistic cries of ‘Maths!’, the show lurches eerily close to a mathematics class gone wrong. The trouble is, for such an unusual concept, the humour isn’t very original. Many of the jokes rely heavily on stereotypes and in doing so only really scratch the surface of their potential.

The maths itself is a major problem. While a scatter-shot of formula across the screen may make sense to someone of Pampena’s mathematical intellect, the average Joe is left staring at hieroglyphics. And by the time the formula and the joke come together, we have no choice but to take Pampena’s word for it.

That said, Pampena’s bold antics definitely rouse a chortle or two. His finale’an aerobic dance-a-thon through the entirety of Einstein’s E=mc?‚⧠formula’is just plain bizarre.

Unfortunately like algebra classes of old, The Mathematical Revolution leaves us a little vague, a little amused, but certainly with a sense of mind-boggling bewilderment.