Summary and Review of Proof, a Play from David Auburn

Proof  by David Auburn premiered on Broadway in October 2000. It received national attention, earning the Drama Desk Award, the Pulitzer Prize, and the Tony Award for Best Play. The play is an intriguing story about family, truth, gender, and mental health, set in the context of academic mathematics. The dialogue is quick-witted, and it has two main characters who are compelling and well-developed. The play does, however, have a few salient flaws. Plot Overview of Proof Catherine, the twenty-something daughter of an esteemed mathematician, has just laid her father to rest. He died after suffering from a prolonged mental illness. Robert, her father, had once been a gifted, ground-breaking professor. But as he lost his sanity, he lost his ability to work coherently with numbers. The audience is quickly introduced to the main characters of the play and their roles in the storyline. The lead character, Catherine, is brilliant in her own right, but she fears that she might possess the same mental illness, which ultimately incapacitated her father. Her older sister, Claire, wants to take her to New York where she can be cared for, in an institution if need be. Hal (a devoted student of Roberts) searches through the professors files hoping to discover something usable so that his mentors final years wont have been a complete waste. During the course of his research, Hal discovers a pad of paper filled with profound, cutting-edge calculations. He incorrectly assumes the work was Roberts. In truth, Catherine wrote the mathematic proof. No one believes her. So now she must provide proof that the proof belongs to her. (Note the double-entendre in the title.) What Works in Proof? Proof  works very well during the father-daughter scenes. Unfortunately, there are only a few of these flashbacks. When Catherine does converse with her father, these scenes reveal her often conflicting desires. We learn that Catherines academic goals were thwarted by her responsibilities to her ailing father. Her creative urges were offset by her propensity for lethargy. And she worries that her so-far undiscovered genius might be a tell-tale symptom of the same affliction to which her father succumbed. David Auburns writing is at its most heartfelt when father and daughter express their love for—and sometimes despair over—mathematics. There is a poetry to their theorems. In fact, even when Roberts logic has failed him, his equations exchange rationality for a unique form of poetry: Catherine: (Reading from her fathers journal.)Let X equal the quantities of all quantities of X.Let X equal the cold.Its cold in December.The months of cold equal November through February. Another strength of the play is the character Catherine. She is a strong female character: incredibly bright, but by no means prone to flaunting her intellect. She is by far the most well-rounded of the characters (in fact, with the exception of Robert, the other characters seem bland and flat by comparison). Proof  has been embraced by colleges and high school drama departments. And with a leading character like Catherine, it is easy to understand why. A Weak Central Conflict One of the major conflicts of the play is Catherines inability to convince Hal and her sister that she actually invented the proof in her fathers notebook. For a while, the audience ​is unsure as well. After all, Catherines sanity is in question. Also, she has yet to graduate from college. And, to add one more layer of suspicion, the proof is written in her fathers handwriting. But Catherine has a lot of other preoccupations. Shes dealing with grief, sibling rivalry, romantic tension, and the slow sinking feeling that she is losing her mind. She isnt terribly concerned about proving that the proof is hers. But she is deeply upset that the people closest to her fail to believe her. For the most part, she doesnt spend much time trying to prove her case. In fact, she even tosses the notepad down, saying that Hal can publish it under his name. Ultimately, because she doesnt really care about the proof, we, the audience, dont care too much about it either, thereby diminishing the impact of the conflict on the drama. A Poorly Conceived Romantic Lead There is another weakness in this play, the character Hal. This character is sometimes nerdy, sometimes romantic, sometimes charming. But for the most part, hes an unpleasant man. Hes the most skeptical about Catherines academic abilities, yet through most of the play, he never chooses to talk to her, even briefly, about math so as to determine her mathematical skills. He never bothers until the plays resolution. Hal never states this overtly, but the play suggests that his main reason for doubting Catherines authorship of the proof is a sexist bias. Lackluster Romantic Storyline Most egregious in this drama is the half-hearted love story that seems tacked on and extraneous to the dramatic center. And perhaps it is more accurate to call it a lust story. During the second half of the play, Catherines sister discovers that Hal and Catherine have been sleeping together. Their sexual relationship seems very casual. Its main function to the plot is that it increases the hurt of Hals betrayal in the eyes of the audience as he continues to doubt Catherines genius. The play Proof is a fascinating yet flawed exploration of grief, family loyalties, and the relationship between mental health and truth.