‘Proof’

George Street welcomes back David Auburn’s acclaimed family drama, which grabs your heart and mind and doesn’t let go.

By: Stuart Duncan
   Proof is back home. One late evening in 1999, David Saint, the artistic director of George Street Playhouse in New Brunswick, picked up a play by a new author and began to read. The next morning he called that playwright, David Auburn, and discovered that no producer had showed interest in the work — in fact, Mr. Auburn had no agent. Mr. Saint offered to it play into George Street’s two-week spring workshop, the Next Stage Festival of New Plays.
   The results were tremendous. Proof went to New York, premiered at the Manhattan Theatre Club, and then went to Broadway. Honors flowed in: the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the Tony Award for the Best New Play, and dozens of others. It quickly became the most sought-after play around the country. It is now back at George Street in an evening that grabs both your heart and mind and doesn’t let go for 150 minutes. An opening-night audience applauded each scene as if it were the final curtain.
   We watch the back porch of an old house in Chicago. A young girl, Catherine, is talking with her father. It is her birthday, and he has provided champagne, not a very good year. We soon learn he has a reputation as a mathematical genius and that he is dead. Dead father, flaky daughter — not a bad beginning. Before long we will meet the other two characters in the piece: Hal, a math grad student, former pupil of the father, who hopes to rummage through the files in hopes of gleaning some new, important material. This is not very likely, it seems, since it has been a decade since the father produced anything from his fuddled brain.
   And Claire, Catherine’s older sister, a New York City business-girl who is determined to bury dad without much ceremony, sell the old house and get her younger sister to New York where she can meet a nice doctor and have a life.
   The first act — and it is the finest, taut first act in memory — ends with the discovery of a stunning mathematical "proof" and the even more stunning announcement from Catherine that it is she, not her dad, who wrote it.
   The cast of four at George Street exhibits one of those rarities in theater: They don’t just play the roles, they inhabit them. Ali Marsh is a sensational Catherine, underplaying the dialogue with extraordinary insights, each pause a gentle touch to the heart. Newcomer Eric Altheide, fresh from N.Y.U. Drama School, brings a boyish charm to Hal, replacing youthful arrogance with genuine passion. Kelly McAndrew imbues Claire with urban liberalism. In London the role was played with tight, hair-bun concern; here the hair is loose, freshly washed, casual yet precise. Brian Smiar plays the father on a one-dimensional plane, missing some of the author’s intents.
   R. Michael Miller has provided a full-stage, realistic set design that contributes much to the evening. Director Michael Morris has staged the show beautifully, allowing the company full time for the economy of language to develop. The audience is permitted to reach conclusions moments before the onstage characters discover them. It is exciting theater — one of the most exciting productions in years.
Proof continues at George Street Playhouse, 9 Livingston Ave., New Brunswick, through March 16. Performances: Tues.-Sat. 8 p.m., Sun. 2, 7 p.m.; March 8, 15, 2 p.m. Tickets cost $26-$50. For information, call (732) 246-7717. On the Web: www.georgestplayhouse.org