An enduring staple of drama is the link between genius and mental turmoil. We've come to accept that the ability to create great art is frequently accompanied by great madness. Lately, a new wrinkle has crept into that time-honored concept: eminent mathematicians are not just nerds; their work is grand art, so they must also be quite mad.
Silver Spring Stage tackles the issue in its captivating production of David Auburn's 2000 Tony- and Pulitzer Prize-winning drama, "Proof." If you had hoped to see Arena Stage's top-notch production of the play last season and missed it, the Silver Spring troupe's presentation is nearly as accomplished.
From left, Maura Stadem, Casey Jones and Andrea Spitz in "Proof," a drama about a father-daughter relationship.
(Neil Edgell)
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There's less science in "Proof" than in Michael Frayn's compelling "Copenhagen," which features two physicists in a fascinating discussion of the ethics of nuclear fission. "Proof" is primarily an interpersonal family drama with digits and dementia as background. We meet Catherine (Andrea Spitz) on the back porch of the shabby Chicago home she shared with her father, Robert (Nick Sampson), a legendary mathematician and professor for whom she set aside her own dreams of a life in the numbers business.
Robert, it seems, had been losing his mind for years and required Catherine's constant care. With her father's death, Catherine now has to decide what to make of her life, aided by her genuinely concerned but meddlesome sister, Claire (Maura Stadem), and a graduate student named Hal (Casey Jones), who is cataloguing the scores of notebooks that the celebrated professor filled with numerical ramblings over the last few isolated years of his life.
Auburn sketches an interesting depiction of the rarefied world of brilliant mathematicians who push the boundaries of knowledge and tend to do their most important work while still quite young. It's fascinating insight, but it serves primarily as a backdrop for Catherine to seek her future and cope with long-denied feelings, doubts and hopes.
Spitz dynamically takes us through Catherine's shifting moods. She's both fragile and tough, alternately resentful of and thankful for her father's legacy, and confused about her course. There is always an underlying fear that she has inherited not only her father's genius but also his mental instability. Spitz successfully layers her performance so these strains are evident simultaneously.
Jones is amiable but vulnerable as Hal, providing enough nuance to keep the audience guessing whether he is genuinely interested in Catherine or primarily hoping to further his own career with the scrawls found in the old man's notebooks. With able assistance from Stadem and Sampson -- who appears in flashback scenes -- Spitz and Jones build enough mounting emotional investment in the audience that a revelation that brings Act One to an abrupt end generates actual gasps.
Director Norman Seltzer maintains satisfying dynamics and pacing, except for patches in the troublesome second act where the playwright's use of flashbacks damages the momentum the cast has steadily created in the present time. A linear telling of the story would be a distinct improvement.
The title "Proof," which refers to the formulaic demonstration that a mathematical statement is true (can you actually prove two plus two equals four?) turns out to have a double meaning since Catherine has to prove something to herself and the world. It adds up to an engrossing exercise.
"Proof" continues through Dec. 11 at Silver Spring Stage, 10145 Colesville Rd. (in the Woodmoor Shopping Center). Showtime Fridays and Saturdays is 8 p.m., with Sunday matinees at 2 p.m. For reservations, call 301-593-6036. For information and reservations, visit www.ssstage.kkorg.
