PROOF

The Ross Valley Players, embarking on their 77th season, are currently staging PROOF: a Pulitzer Prize winning play written by David Auburn and superbly directed by Cris Cassell.

Katherine McDowell, plays lead as Catherine: a closet math prodigy and one of two daughters of a distinguished mathematician and professor of math at the University of Chicago.

Wood Lockhart, ably plays the deteriorating mathematician: Robert.

Writing 40-page mathematical proofs seems to have loosened Robert’s grip on the mundane: he weaves in and out of the sanity lane, as if karma, defending mediocrity, demands that he pay a price for his prodigious math acumen.

Fortunately, for liberal arts majors who only made it as far as first semester Geometry or were forced to rely on stealth reconnaissance to transcend Algebra-I in less than two years, the show contains very little math jargon and no quiz following the final curtain.

Be warned: there is a brief mention of prime numbers; but it is over and done with before any soporific stupors can be clearly established and no one in the audience is called upon to provide an example of a prime number.

Many of the usual monikers for math wizards are bandied about: geek, nerd and dweeb; as well as a full catalogue of stereotypic math nerd behaviors and personality traits: social ineptitude, abysmal sartorial standards, a lack of musical or choreographic skills, and of course, major deficiencies in the concupiscent arts.

In short, there is a reiteration of all of the stock clichés and usual mythologies that math savants have come to recognize as the secret revenge of the basket weavers and the Phys-Ed majors.

The plot line is a little reminiscent of THE PRICE by Arthur Miller: one sibling seemingly sacrifices college and career in order to attend to an ailing father, while the other sibling is reveling in success: fresh roasted coffee, a cute apartment and all the perquisites of a dual income and the good life in Manhattan.

When the father dies, the Manhattanite comes home: ostensibly for the funeral but also to liquidate the estate and to roust her sister out of the homestead she unilaterally proffered.

With airplane engines virtually turning on the tarmac, an eleventh hour intervention by Hal, a Chicago graduate student and also a digeratti, (perhaps named for Hal from Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001 SPACE ODESSY) seems destined to rescue Catherine from a disastrous, squandered life as an undiscovered Sophie Germain (see Frederick Gauss), a ward of her bourgeois sister, and an exile amongst the skyscrapers, fresh roasted coffee, lithium and Thorazine needles of Manhattan.

In a world where image is everything, it is refreshing attend a play that focuses on real people of substance, even if the substance is math and the characters while away their hours cranking out arcane formulae, spouting math anecdotes and sharpening pencils.

For an evening that is math friendly and thoroughly enjoyable, call 415 456-9555.

Reviewed by Jeffrey R Smith of the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Cirlce