Theatre review: Proof

Published on Tuesday 2 February 2010 18:10

PROOF *** PERTH THEATRE

ON THE surface, David Auburn's award-winning drama Proof is the play with everything. First seen in New York in 2000, it won a Pulitzer Prize and a Tony Award; in the 2005 film version, Gwyneth Paltrow and Anthony Hopkins played troubled heroine Catherine, and her recently-deceased father, Robert, once a brilliant mathematician.

The play features four convincing characters – also including Catherine's admirer, and her pushy career-girl sister – along with a well-made plot, and an atmospheric setting in an old Chicago lakeside house. The family situation around which it revolves is both familiar and tense; like Arthur Miller's The Price, it involves a breakdown of relations between two siblings following their father's death. And Ian Grieve's intense and lyrical Perth production pulls out all the stops to make the drama work.

There are fine central performances from Gareth Thomas as Robert and the lovely Neve McIntosh as Catherine; and a glorious set design by Kenny Miller, magically lit by Kate Bonney, showing a storm-tossed galleon on a starlit lake, within three dramatically receding giant picture-frames.

So why is so much of this so dull to watch? Simply because it lacks a central theme, and therefore a reason to give a damn. Sometimes it seems to be about genius and madness, sometimes about the nature of mathematics, sometimes – rather cloyingly – about fathers and daughters, and the need to move on.

But none of these themes emerges clearly from the pack; and the play therefore depends for its appeal on our willingness simply to dote on the gorgeous Catherine, despite her bad temper, foul manners, and irrational reactions to almost everything. With actresses like Paltrow and McIntosh in the central role, that presumption of complicity almost works. But there's a vacuum at the heart of things, nonetheless; a long yawn which says, OK, this girl starts out unhappy and becomes a little happier. But so what?