Proof, Menier Chocolate Factory - theatre review

David Auburn’s drama of maths and mind games gets a polished revival courtesy of Polly Findlay
p60 Proof at the Menier Chocolate Factory Jamie Parker as Hal, Mariah Gale as Catherine ©Alastair Muir
Alastair Muir
21 March 2013

Plays about maths and science aren’t all that plentiful but they can be incredibly seductive. There’s maths in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, currently in the West End, as well as in Complicité’s mind-bending A Disappearing Number, and there’s scientific wizardry in recent hits such as Lucy Prebble’s The Effect and Nick Payne’s Constellations.

David Auburn’s Proof is an earlier piece with a mathematical bent. First seen in 2000, it was later made into a film starring Gwyneth Paltrow. Here it gets a polished revival courtesy of Polly Findlay, a director with an aptitude for both technical matters and intimate ones.

The main character is Catherine, who stops her studies to care for her father Robert, a brilliant maths scholar hollowed out by illness. It’s giving very little away to say that he dies, leaving Catherine isolated.

She forms a bond with Robert’s handsome former pupil, Hal, played by Jamie Parker. Looking through the cache of papers Catherine has inherited, Hal spots a dazzling mathematical proof. The discovery obliges Catherine to examine the true nature of Robert’s legacy.

In essence this is a domestic drama, in which Catherine wrestles with her father’s quirks (well conveyed by Matthew Marsh), bolshie suggestions from her sister Claire (Emma Cunniffe) and her confused feelings about the effusive yet sceptical Hal. The awkwardness of these relationships is deftly evoked. Parker is engaging as Hal, full of passion and charm, and Mariah Gale as Catherine has an amazing incisiveness.

It’s a problem, though, that the play does quite a poor job of showing what genius looks like — and how it feels. Hal gives the most cursory explanation of the supposedly magical proof as he shuffles off stage: we are expected to be content with a bit of evasive chat about prime numbers.

What we’re left with is the familiar line that intellectual brilliance is never far removed from madness. Apparently, Robert revolutionised his field twice before the age of 22 but this doesn’t ring true. Proof strikes me as a shallow play, made to seem complex by Auburn’s command of structure, by Findlay, and above all by the performers.

Until April 27 (020 7378 1713, menierchocolatefactory.com)

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