Proof

Synopsis

Catherine has cared for her father Robert, a renowned mathematician, through his mental illness for the past five years. His ex-student, Hal, discovers a ground-breaking proof in Robert's office but the question is posed: who is the real author of this brilliant work? Catherine struggles to solve this as well the most perplexing problem of all: how much of her father's madness - or genius - has she inherited?

Our Review:

16 May 2002

The proof is in the pudding, so the saying goes, and there's plenty of pudding in John Madden's UK premiere production of David Auburn's Tony Award-winning play.

It's Catherine's birthday. She's 25, her father Robert (a languid Robert Pickup in flashback) has just died and she's worried she might be going crazy, not only with grief but through the cruelties of the gene pool. Robert, a mathematical genius who made all sorts of important discoveries in his early 20s, was more occupied in the twilight of his career with losing his mind and being waited on hand and foot by Catherine, sacrificing friendships, education and her misspent youth to do so.

Has Catherine inherited her father's sickness? His talent for numbers? Both? When, in one of the hundred-odd notebooks left behind in his study, the solution to a brilliant mathematical proof is found, Catherine claims that she, not Robert, wrote it. If so, she is a genius; if not, so Auburn's script suggests, it's to ...

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Latest User Review

USER: Whatsonstage.com - 6 June 2002:

Great acting from everyone, but a slightly ordinary play, with some ponderous moments which the director should have ironed out. Ms Paltrow has the opportunity to exhibit a wide range of emotions and she meets the challenge beautifully, and plays a convincing mid-twentysomething too. Who wouldn't have been happy to be involved in those rather passionate clinches too?!...

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