Family Matters

Every relation is a piece of the puzzle in a mathematical ‘Proof’ at George Street Playhouse.

By: Susan Van Dongen
   Math is easy compared to life in a dysfunctional family. When certain buttons are being pushed, not even the ivory tower of pure intellect can protect you from your relatives.
   With the hit Broadway drama Proof, playwright David Auburn meshed the mystery of math with the familial messes one might find on a daytime-TV talk show. These might seem like two different worlds, but the combination worked beautifully — enough to garner a Pulitzer Prize for the writer and a 2001 Tony Award for best play.
   For Michael Morris, who will direct the George Street Playhouse production of Proof, which runs Feb. 18-March 16, mathematics might be the play’s central metaphor, but the puzzle of the troubled family is what really speaks to the audience.
   "It’s one of those stories that, through its very specifics, manages to communicate to just about every family I can think of, including everyday families with no mathematics and genius in them," Mr. Morris says. "I would challenge someone not to find something in this play that resonates for them. It gives voice to a lot of things, including the issues dysfunctional families struggle with. And isn’t every family dysfunctional in a way?"
   Proof is the story of the enigmatic Catherine, her manipulative sister Claire, their brilliant mathematician father and an unexpected suitor. The family members are all pieces of the puzzle in the search for the truth behind a mysterious mathematical proof.
   Interestingly, before the play was on the national radar screen, it had a two-week workshop and several public performances as part of GSP’s Next Stage Festival of New Plays. From New Brunswick the play moved to New York, first at Manhattan Theatre Club, then to the Walt Kerr Theatre on Broadway, becoming one of the most honored and successful plays in two decades.
   "Way before its first incarnation, it was workshopped here, which is really wonderful," says Mr. Morris, who says GSP artistic director David Saint personally invited him to direct the play. "It was kind of a wonderful New York story. I had recently moved from London and was having dinner in (the city) with my fiancée. David Saint was there too and we got on really well. He mentioned there was a ‘secret play’ (George Street) was putting in their fifth slot. That’s how I got involved initially.
   "I’d read it, although I missed the production in London with Gwyneth Paltrow because I was working in Los Angeles at the time. There was all this noise about what a great play it was. When the opportunity with the George Street Playhouse came through, I had a chance to reread it. When you get a play like ‘Proof’ and a writer of this caliber trusting you with their words, it’s a joy."
   The play revolves around Catherine, a young woman who has spent years caring for her brilliant but unstable father, Robert. On the eve of her 25th birthday, Catherine is trying to deal with the arrival of her estranged sister, Claire, a successful Wall Street banker. Also on hand is Hal, a former student of her father’s who hopes to find valuable work in the more than 100 notebooks Robert has left behind.
   Claire is the sister with the worldly success, using numbers as a way to gain tangible power, whereas Catherine lives more in the world of ideas, much like her father. She struggles to solve the most perplexing problem of all: how much of her father’s genius — or madness — will she inherit?
   Mr. Morris’ recent credits include the world premiere of Chinese Friends by Jon Robin Baitz as part of the Mark Taper Forum’s "New Works Festival," The Paris Letter, also by Mr. Baitz, for the Ojai Playwrights Conference, The Weir by Conor McPherson, as well as works by Zoe Lewis, Israel Horovitz, Martin McDougall, Maurice Panych and Richard Harris.
   Currently resident director of the Ojai Playwrights’ Conference, located outside Los Angeles, Mr. Morris was artistic director of London’s Old Vic Theatre from 1997-2001. The youngest person ever to hold the position once held by Sir John Gielgud and Laurence Olivier, Mr. Morris served as producer or co-producer of more than 25 productions at the Old Vic.
   "It was the most incredible experience," Mr. Morris says. "I was very lucky. I walked into a job that had been occupied by Olivier, Gielgud and Ralph Richardson. All these incredible names had tried their hand at running this theater."
   Interestingly, the Old Vic was in the process of being sold. Mr. Morris and a handful of believers brought it back from the brink of destruction.
   "This is the oldest theater in London — Olivier founded the National Theater there," Mr. Morris says. "There was talk that a brewery was going to buy it and turn it into a pub and possibly a lap-dancing club. A number of people, including Kevin Spacey and Stephen Daldry (who directed ‘The Hours’), helped raise the money to buy the place. They asked me to help run it, along with this incredible board of people."
   In the GSP production of Proof, Catherine is played by Ali Marsh, familiar to New Brunswick audiences as Tess from last year’s play The Sisters Rosensweig. Brian Smiar, who recently toured with the national production of Wit, plays the father. Kelly McAndrew and Eric Altheide play Claire and Hal.
   "The play is entirely set on the porch of the family home in Chicago," Mr. Morris says. "There’s a feeling that Catherine has never been able to get away from outside of that, that she is very much inside the place where numbers are sacred. It’s like everything in their lives revolves around the infinite capabilities of numbers. Paradoxically, this traps them in the house.
   "On the other hand, Claire, who has never had this kinship with her father, has taken her more mediocre talent with numbers out into the world. She’s had a certain amount of success and is able to engage more with people."
   With all of her achievements, however, Claire has never fully understood her sister, and feels that Catherine is tipping into madness. Claire wants to manipulate the family system and control this unstable element, and Catherine has to summon all of her self-confidence to fight back. A central element of Proof is the sad fact that, although they’re related by blood, siblings frequently don’t know each other at all. Catherine and Claire are veritable strangers.
   "A lot of our work has been to focus on those things that happen between siblings," Mr. Morris says. "We each grow up in the same family, but there are vastly different histories and experiences of the same set of parents. Later, when we evaluate things, we find that we took different roads. Often these are paths we had no choice in taking.
   "For Catherine and Claire, they feel that they both did the right thing but they still carry these scars. You feel that if they weren’t sisters, they wouldn’t be friends. That’s a sad state and applies to many of us."
   Mr. Morris says Mr. Auburn’s ability to communicate this universal experience of family difficulties is what resonated so strongly with Proof’s audiences and critics. Even people who have no interest in the esoterica of mathematics responded to and connected with the play.
   "David Auburn never takes the easy road as a writer," Mr. Morris says. "He writes the conversations that are the hardest to pin down but resonate the loudest, and with ‘Proof,’ he’s done it very well, very smoothly."
Michael Morris directs Proof at the George Street Playhouse, 9 Livingston Ave., New Brunswick, Feb. 18-March 16. Performances: Tues.-Sat. 8 p.m., Sun. 2, 7 p.m.; Feb 22, 27, March 8, 15, 2 p.m. Tickets cost $26-$50. For information, call (732) 246-7717. On the Web: www.georgestplayhouse.org