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Princeton Summer Theater Presents Award-Winning “Proof,” A Mystery Romance To Delight Mathematicians (and Others)
Donald Gilpin
The proof in question, in Princeton Summer Theater’s current production of the 2000 drama Proof, concerns a theorem about prime numbers that mathematicians have tried in vain to verify for thousands of years. The elaborate proof is found among the notebooks of the recently deceased University of Chicago professor Robert (Geoff Peterson), renowned as a genius who revolutionized modern mathematics before going insane in the last years of his life. But who wrote that proof? Was it Robert or his 25-year-old daughter Catherine (Nicole Kontolefa), who sacrificed years of her life and risked her own sanity to care for her beloved mentally ill father?
Both Hal (Ken King), Robert’s graduate student who has fallen in love with Catherine, and Claire (Anissa Naouai), Catherine’s pragmatic older sister who left Chicago to become a successful currency analyst in New York, are skeptical that Catherine, with only a little formal training and whatever mathematics she may have absorbed from years of proximity to her father, could have created such a sophisticated, groundbreaking piece of work.
Proofs and mysteries abound, while the human issues rapidly subsume the mathematical ones in this rich and artful character drama. Can Catherine prove that she wrote the proof of that theorem? Will Catherine prove to be her father’s daughter in both genius and insanity? What must daughters and fathers do to prove their love for each other? How can Hal prove his trust and convince Catherine of his love and honorable intentions? Can Catherine overcome her doubts, fears and bitterness to prove herself sane, able to love and capable of functioning independently?
And for real-life family drama behind the scenes, this multi-layered production poses additional thought-provoking challenges, as Mr. Peterson, in the role of Robert, turns out to be the father of the show’s director, Princeton University junior Jed Peterson, who is also the PST artistic director. Mr. Peterson senior, a 1969 Princeton graduate, met his wife-to-be, Jed’s mother, on the Murray Theater stage in 1966 in a production of Rostand’s The Romantics, and both became founding members of Princeton Summer Theater two years later.
Winner of the Tony Award for Best Play, the Pulitzer for Drama and a hit starring Mary-Louise Parker both on and off Broadway, David Auburn’s Proof poses abundant complexity and ambiguity, but this PST company rises impressively to all the challenges. The four performers have explored deeply and thoughtfully in their character work. They are convincing in their shifting moods, emotions and actions. The characters’ silences, the beats between lines, their looks are often as eloquent as the lines themselves. These four characters and their relationships come to life vibrantly and poignantly here.
Ms. Kontolefa’s Catherine is especially sympathetic and moving. As the action shifts backwards and forwards in time between the present (just after Robert’s death) and the past (Robert’s period of temporary partial recovery three or four years earlier), Ms. Kontolefa vividly reveals her vulnerable character’s bitterness and anger towards her father, who cannot live without her care and cannot give her the independence she needs. Even more apparent, however, is the love she feels for her father and her pain, first in bearing witness to his suffering, then in struggling to carry on after his death.
The father-daughter relationship — its development in the past, its impact in the present and its possible consequences as Catherine attempts to move on — constitutes the core of Proof, and Mr. Peterson is focused, credible and expressive as the brilliant math professor, the mental patient fearfully attempting to hold onto his sanity, and the loving, over-protective father. These characters are mathematicians, each with a finely developed, ironic sense of humor. The mathematics subculture revealed here brings a pleasant air of the comic and whimsical to the serious subject matter.
Ms. Kontolefa further displays her rich range of emotions in her interactions with her sister, who wants to uproot her from her life in Chicago and take her to be cared for in New York, and with Hal, who is attracted and awe-struck by both Catherine’s mathematical genius and her romantic appeal.
As Hal, the outsider to this intense family group, Mr. King is earnest and sincere, in his math and his courtship, but does not hesitate to show his sharp sense of humor and to create a character that provides the ray of hope for the outcome of this human drama. Ms. Naouai’s Claire, the New York businesswoman and the only character coming from the “real” world, clashes dramatically with Catherine and sets off long-festering, thoroughly credible sibling guilt, rivalry and resentment on both sides.
Matthew Campbell’s back-porch set, with suggestions of the house beyond, serves the action sturdily and realistically, while David Bengali’s lighting assists admirably in creating moods and clarifying shifts in time throughout the two acts and nine scenes of the play.
Jed Peterson’s detail work has brought bountiful rewards in all aspects of the direction of this production. His innovative casting — his father; Ms. Kontolefa and Ms. Naouai, both graduates of New York’s High School of Performing Arts in their final year at Moscow Art Theater School; and Mr. King, a junior at SUNY Purchase — pays off handsomely. Thorough, intelligent rehearsing is evident in nuanced characterizations and the finely tuned moment-to-moment interactions among characters. The action flows smoothly and clearly, and all production elements come together with a polished professionalism.
Though Mr. Auburn goes to some lengths here to create a world of academic mathematicians, the actual math, the exploration of the mysterious theorem on prime numbers, is not, luckily for some of us, probed too deeply. Scientists and mathematicians will find less serious substance here than in Michael Frayn’s Copenhagen or Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia or Jumpers. The delights of this production lie more strikingly in the richness of the characters, the resonance of this moving, carefully wrought family drama (on stage and back stage), and the impressive accomplishments of the small, tightly knit Princeton Summer Theater ensemble.
David Auburn’s Proof runs through July 18, at 8 p.m. Thursday and Friday and at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday. For further information call (609) 258-7062 or visit www.PrincetonSummerTheater.org.
