Proof, Sydney Theatre Company, at the Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House.
Proof, by David Auburn, has been a startling theatre success across the world and has won full houses here over the last few weeks before departing on a broader tour.
However, it has also attracted some criticism as being an easy play, a play designed to please without really challenging or stretching the audience. In other words, the dialogue sparkles, the characters are rounded, the acting is superior and the plot is fully developed.
Many of the write-ups emphasise that the play is a mystery. Catherine (Jacqueline McKenzie) has been caring for her mathematician father. After his death a post-grad student is going through her fathers’ notebooks, pretty much finding the ravings of a deranged mind. Catherine gives him the key to a drawer in her father’s desk and in it he finds one last notebook, this time containing a “proof”, a brilliant mathematical proof.
But who wrote it?
However, the play isn’t really a mystery at all and if you go along expecting some sort of whodunnit you will definitely be disappointed. Instead Proof explores relationship issues, and aspects of genius and madness.
It may seem an unlikely vehicle for comic writing, but there is a large amount of humour in this play. Writer Auburn began his career with comic sketches, a capability that leavens what otherwise could have been quite a dark story.
It is telling that Auburn has formed a company to revive some theatre classics. This play has a classic feel about it, a family saga with a sort of Tennessee Williamson realism. He likes the “emotional availability” of these classics, their lack of cynicism.
In that sense Auburn and Proof, at this point, represent a turning back of the theatre clock, a reaction to high art in theatre, to postmodernism and multiple layers of irony. There isn’t a jot of cynicism in this play, and that, frankly, is refreshing. But it is also a form of escapism. I had a strong feeling the play was answering an audience need in that regard.
Just how much does Proof relate to and explore what it is like to live in the early days of the third millennium? Not hugely.
The characters are all appealing in their own ways. There are no nasties and no unpleasant surprises. It is all set on a back porch and we, the members of the audience, want to be there on that porch with the very appealing characters. We want to meet the physics geeks that cause havoc at Catherine’s father’s wake and hear the maths department band. I at least (and I suspect I was not alone) wanted to cuddle up to Catherine big time.
This is definitely a play that draws you in with its warmth. It has a veneer of big ideas, but it is really about families and about romance and a bit about melancholy.
Jacqueline McKenzie is superb, but won’t be accompanying the play when it tours – she has to go back to the US. She oozes personality and vibrancy. Jonny Pasvolsky was also very good as the post-grad student. As we were with the sponsors, JD Edwards, the cast joined us for drinks afterwards. Pasvolsky’s transformation from nervous, stammering geek (and suiter to Catherine) into his real persona was truly startling.
Barry Otto is a stalwart of Australian theatre, but I found his accent a bit odd. I’m not sure what it was meant to be.
Anyway, Proof: it’s really nice.