★★☆
Proof, as a play, has a lot going for it. It won the David Auburn the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2001 and bagged a Tony Award for Best Play. If a script were ever to comprehensively establish itself in the world of performance, this is the way to do it.
Tackling the foggy mirage between genius and madness, family intimacy and discord, love and fear, Proof has all the hallmarks of a work that can deeply impact. Or rather, should.
We are thrown into the fragile life of lead character Catherine, whose genius mathematician father has just passed away. As the play unfolds, the audience is front and centre to Catherine’s journey of grappling with the suffocating hold of grief and fear. Will the unrelenting march of time steadily bring her own dose of cruel insanity? How is she to grieve a man who was already irrevocably lost? Within the unravelling or vindication of Catherine is where the central pull of this work lies.
Freefall Productions, in collaboration with the New Theatre, are the agents behind Sydney’s newest interpretation of this revered work, and while it’s peppered throughout with moments of visceral potency, the end taste of the production is that of satisfied sweetness. Not an alarming outcome in the slightest, but a little far from the mental wrangling associated with a play seeped in questioning hereditary madness and trust.
The set is a crisp, professional and clean one, yet it portrays the exterior of what is spoken of as a rambling old home. The acting, too, is crisp and clean, as the cast delivers consistent north-eastern American accents. But the potency of many of the key scenes, leading to lulls in the linking ones, is lost in the restrained delivery.
What eventuates is an atmosphere that is too clinical. Perhaps even the text itself sets up a production to be sterile: daughter of insane professor wonders if impending madness is to be her lot. In a plot that holds so closely to stereotype and predictability, where is the muck and bitter confusion with which madness suffocates? Freefall’s offering moves and intrigues the audience, but perhaps it does not go far enough.
Photo: Michael Snow of Theatre View
Proofis playing at the New Theatre until Saturday July 30.
