(Above: Erica Towe and Chris Gillooly-Kress star as Catherine and Hal in Proof at the Very Little Theatre; photo by Adrienne West)
By Randi Bjornstad
Proof, which opens April 26 for a short, two-weekend run in the Stage Left performance space at The Very Little Theatre, has a simple plot but one that most people probably can relate to, whether it comes down to the possibility of inherited physical or mental illnesses.
In this case, playwright David Auburn chooses mental illness and builds his play around the impending 25th birthday of a woman named Catherine, who spent years taking care of her genius — mad genius, really — father in his mental and physical decline and until his recent death.
Robert, her father, had been a famous mathematician who had as a very young man solved some kind of seemingly unsolvable problem, but in achieving that became paralyzed with regard to future achievements in life and spirit.
But Catherine also suffers from his disability, because he believed that she had the capacity to carry on and exceed his accomplishment, which she doubts, just as she fears that in any event she might have inherited both his mental ability and instability.
Her stable sister, Claire, arrives to help her deal with the death of their father and the challenge to her future. Hal, a former student of Robert’s, who believes that somewhere among the professor’s notes must be the key to the next great mathematical discovery, also has appeared on the scene. He and Catherine become romantically attracted, and Catherine shares with him a secret she has never told anyone else. But rather than happiness, the revelation drives her to the brink of sanity, as she faces the necessity of proving two things — hence the name of the play — that she actually wrote the proof that Hal has found among her father’s notebooks, and whether she is both like, and she hopes unlike, her father.
Auburn’s play had its debut on both off-Broadway and Broadway in 2000, and the next year won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama as well as the Tony Award for Best Play.
The VLT production features Erica Towe as Catherine, Bill Campbell as Robert, Chris Gillooly-Kress as Hal, and Janna Slack as Claire. Larry K. Fried directs.
Proof
When: Evenings at 7:30 p.m. on April 26-27 and May 2-4; matinees at 2 p.m. on April 28 and May 5
Where: Stage Left at the Very Little Theatre, 2350 Hilyard St., Eugene
Tickets: $14 (non-reserved seats), available at the ticket office, 541-344-7751, from 1:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday, or online at TheVLT.com
