Proof
...hind, hoping that a bit of the old brilliance surfaces somewhere in the pages that seem to be filled merely with a madman's scribblings ..... A notebook surfaces which contains what is, indeed, an impressive proof. Auburn isn't to concerned with specifics: it is a proof of "a mathematical theorem about prime numbers, something mathematicians have been trying to prove since ... since there were mathematicians, basically." And it really isn't that important. Turns out, however, that there is a question of whose proof it is -- because Catherine claims it's hers. Hal knows it is a work of genius, so it can't be Catherine's (all she had done was take "some classes at Northwestern for a few months", after all). Claire thinks the handwriting is obviously her father's. And while she thinks her sister is like Dad in some ways -- "you have some of his talent and some of his tendency toward ... instability" -- she also can't believe Catherine could have come up with whatever it is that this proof is. And she just wants to sell the house and take erratic Catherine back to New York to get her some decent medical treatment. Catherine herself knows she isn't in quite a right state of mind. Her great fear is of winding up like her father. But she is also gifted. "Even your depression is mathematical", Dad notes, and Hal has some sense of her abilities as well. There are further complications: romantic and sexual entanglements, a variety of motives behind each characters actions. The puzzle of who came up with the proof isn't the most intriguing of issues, nor is how easily Hal and Claire can (or could) write off Catherine as a nutcase (or how easily she could write herself off). Still, Auburn sets up the play quite well. There are two dramatically effective scenes, the opening scene and the last line of the first act. It is a reasonably entertaining play. Certainly actors can revel in the parts: the slightly overwritten and simplistic characters and actions should make this a popular stage-play (though the characters are a bit too cartoonish on the page). Note, however, that we really wouldn't mind a moratorium on plays (and novels and films) dealing with what way too many people believe is the thin line between genius and madness. In fact, we'd pay for one. The nutty professor, in all his variations, has been written to death, and Auburn does nothing to revive this very tired genre. Enough already. It's the story of a young woman, Katherine, who has spent years caring for her father who is a brilliant mathematician, and her father began having various kinds of mental illness problems. She gave up her life to care for him. When the play begins the father died. She is sitting alone on the 25th birthday and wondering is this going to happen to me. How much of my father's mental illness have I inherited and have I inherited any of his talent as well? So the play is about a weekend in other life where she is trying to sort that out and she is trying to deal with her sister, who's flown in from New York and she has some plan's for Katherine's life. There is also a character who is a grad student who is a protégé of the father's who is upstairs in the house looking through the dad's papers hoping to find something he left behind. He also kind of has designs on Katherine. This play is an emotional experience that jumps back and forth over five years in the lives of four people. Mathematics is the field within which individual creative activity is sought, but the interesting question about thought at such a high level is how anyone could establish authorship of anything that is authentically new if the circumstances allow some ambiguity. The big joke in the play is about a young mathematician who is drummer in a rock band that performs an imaginary number. It helps if the viewer is familiar with the movie "A Beautiful Mind," as the young mathematician-rock-drummer would be an ideal imaginary character if this play was about John Nash, as seeing people in that movie was not always proof that they existed. The real question that hangs over the future in this play is how crazy anyone is likely to be in the short run and the long run, or if they can muddle through the emotional times without too much of some of the worst alcoholic beverages ever to be mentioned on a stage anywhere. The writing 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." For those naysayer 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 an...