Customer Reviews

Proof - Acting Edition

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4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Not since David Hirson's brilliant La Bete and Wrong Mountain has Broadway seen a more exciting play than Proof! I recommend this book to anyone who appreciates theatre that is as challenging as it is entertaining. I sent many friends to see the original production, and none was disappointed.

In the past few years there has been a resurgence of plays with themes centered around math and science and characters who are mathematicians and scientists. Thank heaven! Michael Frayn's "Copenhagen" is magnificent. Then there are two plays produced by the Manhattan Theater Club: "An Experiment with an Air Pump" by Shelagh Stephenson and this play, "Proof" by David Auburn. I think both are wonderful.

After winning the Pulitzer, a shot at a Tony, and a continuing run on Broadway, Auburn really has no need for my good words; however, let me give a few anyway. This is a cleverly written piece. Unlike "Copenhagen," this play really isn't about mathematicians and scientists. It is just framed around them. No math skills are necessary to enjoy this play. Instead, it is an examination of love, trust, madness and genius presented through the lives of mathematicians.

In fact, the only weakness in this play is when real mathematics comes up. I cringed when I heard the famous exchange between mathematicians G.H. Hardy and Srinivasa Ramanujan put in the mouth of Robert and Catherine, the father/daughter mathematicians at the heart of this play. It just rubbed me the wrong way.

Fortunately, this is the only time math actually comes up. Instead, this play takes us into the lives of four very interesting people. I was fortunate enough to see a performance of this play on its second night on Broadway. I was incredibly moved. Mary-Louise Parker's performance as Catherine was particularly impressive. Reading the script, I was carried right back to the theater and could relive the experience again. I loved it.

David Auburn, Proof (Dramatists Play Service, 2001)

I spent a good deal of my elementary and junior high school years reading plays, as I fancied myself an actor back in the day. A somewhat bad actor, to be sure, but I did manage to score the role of Reb Nahum in our fifth-grade production of Fiddler on the Roof. (Go me!) Acting in theater, however small, gave me a taste for reading plays, and it was quite enjoyable. Somewhere along the way, though, I tailed off, and it has only been recently (as in, in the past month) I've rediscovered the pleasure of reading a stage play. Proof is the second one I've encountered since starting again, and if the quality of these two is anything to go by, I've obviously been missing out on quite a bit in the quarter-century I haven't been keeping up.

Proof is the story of a guy, a girl, and a mathematical equation. Which may not sound all that interesting when put that way, but it is. The girl is the daughter of a mathematical genius who suffered, while still young, a debilitating mental illness. (Think A Beautiful Mind without the paranoia and racism.) The guy is one of his doctoral students from the recent past, when he had a lucid year and briefly advised students at the local university again. The mathematical equation-- well, you'll just have to see, or read, the play.

In a very short span of pages (seventy-four, to be precise), Auburn creates two compelling characters (and a few equally compelling minor players), puts them into a situation, and gives us enough to care about them in the most minimal fashion possible; while there's too much going on for the brevity of the play to really focus on the two of them, the reader still comes to understand much about their depth and various quirks. (It's not for nothing this play won a Drama Pulitzer.) There's no real revelation here; it's almost as if Proof is actually the prequel to whatever it is Auburn really wants to write about these characters. But it works, and it works very well. Enjoyable, and highly recommended. ****

I recently saw the Manhatten Theater Club's production of Proof on Broadway, and I expect to find even more delightful surprises in my first reading of the script. David Auburn's examination of love, trust, and betrayal is subtle and moving. With a keen eye for true human nature, he pits the logic of mathmatics against our emotonal subjectivity and solves the conflict with simplicity and eloquence. His humor and clarity make this script a must-read for all who love intellectual/emotional power struggles. As a theater student, I read any play that falls into my hands, but rarely do I find one with such multi-layered characters matched by such an eloquently truthful plot. You won't be disappointed.

Proof, by David Auburn, is a compelling and tautly beautiful play, ringing with a quiet elegance. Winner of the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the 2001 Tony Award for Best Play, I was introduced to it through the 2005 movie, which now having read the play I realize was an extremely good adaptation, as well as a very good film in its own right. It's the story of Catherine, a brilliant but somewhat neurotic mathematics student who has lived all her life in the shadow of her famous father, a groundbreaking mathematician revered the world over. The play begins with a dialogue between Catherine and her father, in which he berates her for wasting her potential, while gradually, during the course of it, we discover that her father is insane, and has been for quite some time. He is living in semi-seclusion while Catherine looks after him. Then, as the conversation goes on, we - and Catherine - realize that her father is dead; as he calmly informs her "Heart failure. Quick. The funeral's tomorrow." From there, we are slowly sucked into a drama of at once deep intensity and lyrical lightness. Abruptly deprived of the man who, for better or worse, was the center of her existence for all her life, Catherine finds herself having to cope with life and relationships beyond her father, as Harold, a graduate student of her father's, begins going through all her father's journals to see if by some chance he wrote anything significant during his recent years of insanity. Catherine, immediately defensive and certain that her father wrote nothing but graphomaniac scribbles during the last few years, throws him out of the house. Claire is the fourth person in this coterie, Catherine's domineering, overly-careful sister, who ran out on both her father and Catherine years ago(although supporting them financially) and is now determined to drag her "troubled" little sister back with her to New York and fix her up. As half the story is told in flashbacks to scenes betweens Catherine and her father when he was still alive, these make up the four main characters.

Three of the four main characters are mathematicians, and while there is little or no actual math in the play it is still a mathematicians dream(in much the same way Possession is a poet's/writer's dream). One of the many funny moments of the play consists of Hal's band playing a song composed entirely of silence, based on the imaginary number "I", a mathematician's joke.

Proof is a tale of many things; isolation, loneliness, love, hate, the clashing of wildly different characters from different worlds(Harold, more often called Hal, belongs to a band, and Catherin's sister doesn't understand math), and the love-hate relationships engendered within families. But mostly, it is about the quest for genius to find security and definition in a world untailored for fragile people, and to set free the impulse that drives that genius. Proof has an oddly breathless feel at times; as if both Catherine and her burgeoning talent hang in the balance between existence and destruction. In an blending of poetry, prose, and math, we discover her fate, of which the following passage(one of several turning points in the play) is a perfect example -

"Let X equal the cold. It is cold in December. The months of cold equal November through February. There are four months of cold and four of heat, leaving four months of indeterminate temperature. ...Let X equal the month of full bookstores. The number of books approaches infinity as the number of months of cold approaches four. I will be as cold now as I will in the future. The future of cold is infinite. The future of cold is the future of heat..."

Still, while Proof is a remarkable and luminous work, somehow it lacks something - the immensity of vision that I would expect from a Pulitzer-Prize-winning play. It is essentially about individuals, not ideas, and while to some extent this is true of all great literature, still Proof feels small, constrained within its own eclectic world. And there is no great tragedy, love story, or revelation about human nature to make up for this, to dominate it and lift it into a book that says something, a book that will join the pantheon of great literature. It has depth but not width. It's graceful and beautiful, clever and often funny - certainly memorable - but it is not an important work.

Brilliant writing; Brilliant plot; Brilliant dialogue; Brilliant insight: You do the math. This one is a stellar accomplishment, full of sound and fury, signifying just about everything.

I saw this on Broadway, going into it not knowing anything about it. I was completely blown away. The premise is fascinating and it presents a unique and interesting dilemma without being melodramatic.

The writing, scene changes, and excellent characterizations remind me of other writers out there: Miller comes to mind, McCrae's Bark of the Dogwood (though a book, not a play) and even the great Hitchcock. Don't get me wrong--this is not some inept mystery but rather a psychological thriller of sorts, excellently paced and plotted. But I don't mean "thriller" in the commercial way. No, this is one unusual play, and obviously deserved every prized it ever won. Who knew that someone could take such a dry subject as math and create something as wonderful, lush, and eloquent as "Proof."

Also recommended: Death of a Salesman, Angels in America, Bark of the Dogwood, Painting Churches.

This is a wonderful, well-thought out play. The cast consists of only four characters and the plot moves back and forth in time from the present to the past and from dreams to reality. Catherine's father, Robert (who seems loosely based on the real-life John Nash) was one of the most brilliant mathematicians to have ever lived. By the time he was 25 he had changed the mathematics world twice. Then he became mentally sick and his brilliant and beautiful daughter Catherine drops out of school to take care of him. Robert dies, but Catherine has inherited some of his gifts. Though she was forced to drop out of college, she, too is a mathematical genius. The only problem is that her "boyfriend" Hal and her older sister Claire think she has also inherited some of Robert's dementia.

What starts off as a play seemingly about mathematics and the effects of dementia ends up really being a piece of theatrical genius about love and family. A great show if done right.

I saw Proof performed a couple years ago on Broadway, and have read the script twice since. Any performance of Proof hinges on the casting of Robert (an aging mathemetician) and Catherine (his daughter). The performance I saw had two magnificent actors in these roles, which smoothed away some of the rough edges of the script itself.

Don't get me wrong; this is an amazing piece of playwriting, better than 99% of everything else out there. But the setting of the play is so very static, and its language so toned down, that it takes a very talented and entertaining group of actors to pull it off. The writing of Proof is very much like Chekov -- brilliant, but somewhat unapproachable.

(Drama teachers take note: this is a great play for students to improve their acting skills, but a terrible play for students to actually perform.)

The plot, if not the style, of this play can be compared to the style of the recent big-budget film (based on a novel) Big Fish. But in that comparison Proof comes off looking brilliant, and Big Fish comes off looking overwrought. If this play is done right, there is a moment toward the end that can compete -- in terms of sheer pathos and emotionality -- with anything Sophocles ever wrote. Watch for the stage direction: "After a long moment Catherine closes the notebook." It brought tears to my eyes.

For those naysayers who lament the death of the theatre, David Auburn's brilliant, intimate, touching ode to the mysteries of life, family, love and identity offers proof that contemporary playwrights are indeed creating brilliant works of art.

Using four well drawn, three dimensional characters, Auburn paints a vivid portrait of a late mathemetician and his legacy of madness and genius. His youngest daughter may have inherited both as the play centers around identifying the authorship of a magnificent mathematical proof (which ends up being a brilliant use of Hitchcock's "McGuffin" rule).

Auburn creates a play filled with an excellent series of suprises, revelations and passionate debates. His narrative is well structured as it provides the actors with clear objectives and a variety of tactics to explore and enact, all engaging the audience's attention and energy.

Four of my friends recently produced the play and produced an evening of magic. A great theatrical experience demands a strong story to tell and Auburn provides such a vehicle with this, his Pulitzer Prize winning work.

A brilliant piece of writing. A must read for theatre fans and practitioners alike. A most producable work as well. It would make for a fine addition to any theatre season.

It's a genuine pleasure to come across writing that sees clean sentences, never verbose, which aren't denotatively didactic but speak for themselves, even as they seem deceptively straightforward. Woody Allen's `Match Point' and Julian Fellowes's `Gosford Park' come to mind; and David Auburn's `Proof' finds itself in the same league.

Auburn's spare and humorous dialogue, along with his discreetly significant directions for staging, provides a number of starting points for consideration. Three, in particular, by which to anchor thought are Robert and Catherine's seeming obsession with prime numbers; how Robert, in spite of his infirmity, never fails to date his notebook entries correctly; and the nature of said expert's madness. This is a play where mathematics is the ink to the script of being.

Prime numbers are the central figurative device here. Indivisible save by one and by themselves, they are characterised by an absolute duality. Such definity in their mathematical nature mirrors the distinct black-and-white discreteness of an indubitable `yes' and `no', what's true and what's not. Everyone in this play is straining towards some manner of certainty, and the consistent preoccupation with prime numbers is emblematic of this. That there are 103 notebooks of Robert's writings to peruse is an inherent paradox in seeking some evidence of his talent with numbers enduring in the years that he's unwell, and of Catherine's aptitude, as she so claims to possess. The lives of Robert and Catherine are, quite literally, heavily informed numerically - as Robert tells his daughter, `even your depression is mathematical' - but if their lives were to be written with mathematics, there would be no place for prime numbers in the murky midst of workings in life that demand that people take risks.

Risks, however, are what Catherine is pessimistic of venturing. Her relationship with her father - strengthened and tested by living with him for twenty-five years - along with an understanding of his genius is a source of stability for her, something she can be sure of, something she can trust. With the mental decline of her father, that sense of security is shaken, and she begins second-guessing herself, afraid that she may be prone to the same psychological capriciousness she's observed in her father. She takes a gamble with classes at Northwestern, investing hope in, needing to trust to, the possibility of her father being `consistently well'. The risk she takes here doesn't pay off - Robert's condition deteriorates, she leaves having attended only a few lessons. The uncertainty over whether she can catch up is then compounded by depression following the death of her father. She then takes a risk with Hal, taking for granted that he would believe her claim to the authorship of a piece of groundbreaking mathematical proof and support her, which ends up backfiring. Without her father, Catherine finds herself isolated. Yet, what does she, importantly, do to keep herself centred, all those years she looks after her father in his senility? Mathematics, as we come to find out. After putting Robert to bed, after leaving that part of her life, riddled with doubt, behind, she slogs away at proving a theorem. Math reassures her that she is still sane, or at least reasonably lucid and logical, if not completely sensible, in addition to bolstering her dwindling confidence in herself as a mathematician, and as her father's daughter.

Math alone, however, is inadequate. As we see with Catherine, it helps the individual, but in corresponding and trying to connect with people, it becomes relatively impotent. In fact, it can even be misleading. Math convinces Hal of Robert's brilliance; it also acts as a blinker, till the end of the play, to the fact that Robert was in his last years incapacitated from accomplishing anything substantial, even in that fateful year when he seemed at his most clear-headed. A lack of knowledge about numbers and techniques similarly holds Claire back from grasping the possibility that Catherine was capable of such work. In the three-way argument between Hal, Claire and Catherine that seeks irrefutable, hard evidence, physical proof in numbers and writing, ironically, is dismissed, precisely because it's not enough.

The root of all concern, perpetuated quite presumptuously by Claire, though exacerbated by Catherine as well, lies with Robert's worsening mental health when he is alive. Even ability and, by extension, insanity turn out to be matters of numbers - Robert's state is the result of age; and he even reaffirms, by ironically pre-empting, what Hal tells Catherine about `your creativity (peaking) around twenty-three and it's all downhill from there' when he acknowledges the rusting of a `pretty good memory for numbers' as a `stereotype that unfortunately turns out to be true'. They actively identify different points in their lives by age, by numbers. Robert's condition seems to see his mind, of his own volition or otherwise, almost compulsively seeking painstakingly the satisfaction of feeling sure about something. That he mentions to Catherine in a scene of the second act his being `terrified' of not being able to work again tells us, despondently and, again, with grim irony, considering how that scene plays out, of a concern easily empathisable: The need to be able to keep trusting to our faculties, the `font' of our `inspiration', our clarity. For the greater part of this particular scene, Robert's mind appears to convince him that `the machinery' is indeed working meaningfully again, so much so that he gets worked up to a passion when Catherine initially refuses to discuss his supposed outline for a proof with him out in the cold. Without being conscious of it, it seems, he needs something absolute to get by. But after Catherine condescends to read through a few pages aloud, we see Robert, at first robust-looking, almost immune to the cold, gradually being crippled by it apparently as he begins to shiver, with the scene ending with him being less talkative than before, physically and mentally diminished within a matter of moments. The anaesthetic, as it were, of the rush of certainty is removed, and a sense of the cold sets in, paralleling the emergence of an awareness, on Catherine's part, if not Robert's, of the improbability of the latter being able to produce any real work, as well as a realisation on the part of the audience of the unlikelihood of Robert coming up with the mathematical proof at the centre of speculation. The accurate and consistent dating of his notebook entries, otherwise filled with figments of `landscapes' and models for work, empty shells strewn in the wake of his tragically fruitless attempts at solid results, seems sadly the one thing that stays fixed, stable, all that his mind can muster for the comforting impression of some form of immutability and certitude.

The last time we see Robert is when the illusion of certainty ends for him. The first time he appears is as an illusion, a spectre of Catherine's memory (or perhaps her own instability manifest), which is also how the play begins. The play ends, however, with a reasonable confirmation of Cathy being the writer of a proof about prime numbers. Prime numbers triumph at the play's conclusion: It seems something certain has finally been arrived at. Even then, Auburn manages something of a postscript, a comment on life, with Cathy's mathematical work, compared to her father's, as an oblique metaphor: This is a story, in part, about growing up, where age as suggested by numbers means nothing compared to an education derived from Catherine `living in (her) house for twenty-five years' with her father. Robert's `stuff was way more elegant. When he was young', yet, at the same age as her father when he was doing mathematics `like music', Catherine's work already comes off `lumpy', precisely because she's seen the `compromises' that have to be made with herself and that people have to make with each other, as well as the `approximations', hypotheses, hazarding chances and guesses, things taken solely on faith, such as `trust', in life through this entire episode. In the same way she sees only the `places where (the proof is) stitched together', she's seen the unevenness of life, of having to make the effort to `(connect) the dots' and finding out `how to get to the next one' without really ever knowing `if there (is) a next one'. Even within the bounds of truth on paper, we might need to grope in the dark to get to the things that are certain. It's here that mathematics and life find a consolatory confluence: The incontrovertible there certainly are - love; trust; meaning in the efforts we invest; ourselves - and, just like working to figure out the proof to a result you simply know to be undeniable, it's only a matter of getting there, even if the `lumpy' way turns out less than `elegant'.