Opening-night review of *Proof*

by David Auburn
directed by Marianne McLaughlin
at Spokane Civic’s Firth J. Chew Studio Theater through Feb. 11

Words are no deeds; intentions, not even words. If you love your work — really love it — then don’t leave projects unfinished. If you love the people around you, don’t let your love go unspoken. The proof of love falls in the acts of caring and generosity; simply talking about it, not doing anything to express it, is leaving the job undone.

David Auburn’s *Proof* seeks evidence of more than just an elegant mathematical proof, no matter how earth-shaking the equations might be to all the geeks in the math department. For all the focus on the intellects of the father-daughter pair in this play — Robert’s a highly creative, world-class mathematical genius, but also sporadically insane; his daughter Catherine has inherited either his genius or his curse — *Proof* is really a psychological family drama. If you know what cubes and prime numbers are, you’ll follow along with as much math as Auburn puts on display. He’s not after attempted proofs of arcane formulas; he wants to explore what it takes to deliver actual, palpable proofs of human affection.

In the central role of Catherine, Wonder Russell offers proof of her vulnerability, proof of her rage, and abundant proof of her acting ability. For one thing, she pulls off the subtleties of screen acting while managing to project to an entire theater. Shades of assertiveness and anxiety flicker across her face, and it’s subtle, but somehow she manages to distribute the emotion all around the house. She’s loving and loathing, vulnerable and then angry. She displays genuine enthusiasm over a description of the beauties of higher math, and then genuine fear over the onset of the (symbolic) cold. Like her father (who’s older, however, and facing death), she shows her fear of the future. Sometimes completing a full proof involves some risk.

Sometimes in Act Two, Russell seems too whiny, though that’s mostly because Auburn has written a couple of confrontation scenes that begin to repeat themselves. At two and a half hours with intermission, Auburn’s script itself felt about one revelatory scene too long. (He’s fond, without sensationalizing, of withholding the emotional kicker until the ends of scenes — just as in a mathematical proof, as reviewers have noted.)

A couple of scenes are dislocating for the audience, in an effective way: Are we watching reality or fantasy? Are we witnessing what happened objectively or what’s felt subjectively? Turns out that the pinnacles of math, like the valleys of the heart, involve introspection and art. They can’t simply be quantified. In a play in which the audience and Catherine herself are continually wondering about her sanity, Auburn has a way of turning the tables and getting the audience to question its own understanding of what’s going on.

Marianne McLaughlin’s direction takes advantage. From the symbolic long shadow that Robert casts at his first appearance, to the natural mid-conversation swirling of the action from the back porch out to the patio and back, to the way that lovers tentatively circle one another during the checking-each-other-out phase, McLaughlin guides her actors naturalistically without losing necessary emphasis on the thematic high points. She quickly sketches how the two sisters really don’t know one another very well; she allows for the oscillation of affection and resentment between siblings.

The circling moves don’t work so well during the second act’s loving father-daughter scene; but there’s a very good reason that McLaughlin forces her pairs of actors to keep their mutual distance in the opening episodes. There’s a reason that the first scene isn’t touchy-feely. Above all, McLaughlin’s direction helps us appreciate that life isn’t lived fully only through the kind of rah-rah freneticism that our society calls “intensity”; sometimes intensity lies in the quiet life of the mind.

As Hal the grad student, Paul D. Villabrille skimps on the social awkwardness but lives up to the role’s generosity. With so much self-deprecating charm on display, he’s too cool to be a math geek. Auburn has provided Hal with a couple of great moments of ineptitude, and Villabrille plays those moments well. He’s playing the leading man when his character is rooted in the obsessions of a specialist, the deceptions and accusations that an ambitious young man might make. Hal is convinced of his own intelligence and willing to twist the means to achieve the ends that he figures he deserves anyway. It’s a likable but too-nice performance.

In the most thankless role of this quartet – Claire the responsible older sister and mother-figure — Rita O’Farrell acquits herself reasonably well in a plot-device part. Claire does go on and on about the virtues of New York, New York — and somewhere around the edges of her overeager smile, O’Farrell conveys the strain of the insecure yuppie who means to do good but doesn’t fully understand.

J.P. O’Shaughnessy, as the genius father, demonstrated evident affection for the favored daughter — Catherine, the one nearer in temperament to himself. When he raged at her — she can be quite mercurial — his intensity betrayed a mind teetering on the brink. When caught in his vulnerability, he became quite touching indeed. Despite a couple of distracting mannerisms — crooking an elbow and holding a hand aloft like a game-show host, bringing the tips of all his fingers together to signify thought — O’Shaughnessy strides like a patriarch through most of this show. As a man who’s supposed to be exceptional, craggy, fragile, he’s convincing.

The sound design, credited to Janna Cresswell and Peggy Soden, pipes in between-the-scenes jazz to suggest the element of improvisation in concocting one’s proofs of love and logic, along with enough rock ‘n’ roll to hint at Hal’s and Catherine’s wild sides.

This is a very good production of a thought-provoking play — one that the packed opening-night audience clearly appreciated and enjoyed, and which ought to be seen by a wide variety of local theatergoers. If you’re thinking of going — haven’t been to a show in awhile, really should get out more, wouldn’t mind something that makes you think — then don’t be satisfied with partial measures or intentions that fizzle halfway. Go for the complete and elegant *Proof.*