proof
An enigmatic young woman. Her manipulative sister. Their brilliant father. An unexpected suitor.
Starring Anne Heche, Kaitlin Hopkins, Jeremy Sisto and Robert Foxworth
UPDATE 04/06/07 Thank you to VBFHENRM for this news. PROOF will be rebroadcast tomorrow night 04/07/07 on THE PLAY'S THE THING. To find the station nearest you, here is a list. Also, some of these stations have the option of listening to the play live. The one I know of that does is KPCC in Pasadena, CA.
Review
Based on David Auburn's Pulitzer and Tony award winning stageplay, PROOF is the refreshingly romantic story about a troubled young genius whose father has just passed away after years of battling a long illness.
Catherine (Heche) is 25 years old, and feels like she hasn't got a thing to show for it. She is intelligent and has gifts, but has never gotten the chance to use them. She's put off her education to care for her dad, Robert, (Foxworth), a now retired, once renowned math genius who revolutionized the field at least twice, and who had a long illustrious career as a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
The long illness Robert has suffered with is mental illness. In his mid twenties, he began to falter, but he had already made a name for himself in mathematics.
Decades later, he is nothing more than a ghost of his former self, spending every waking hour trying to regain his old abilities. This story is very much like A BEAUTIFUL MIND and it makes me wonder if gifts in math really are a sign of mental illness!!!
The KIND of sickness Robert has is not mentioned, maybe not known. Perhaps he is just senile. His heart is failing too, so he must be way up there in age. He had one period of lucidity about four years ago, but it didn't last but a few months, and Catherine's attempt to complete math courses at Northwestern University was thwarted.
Much of the story is told in flashback, so the story really begins when Robert passes away. Catherine, called Caty by her older sister, is ready to move on with her life. She's sad that Dad is dead, but she's glad too. She's free. His suffering is over, and so is hers, for caring for a hopelessly ill person takes a lot out of you. I really identify with Catherine, being a nurse and all.
Claire, the older sister, (Hopkins) flies in from her home in New York and immediately begins firing questions that Catherine is too exhausted and heartbroken to answer. "What are you going to do???" "Where will you live???" "Have you thought about school???" Her overbearing personality has always rubbed Catherine the wrong way, but now, it's too much, and now, the younger sister, resentful that Claire did little to help with their aging father, is only too eager to snap at her to shut up!!!
From the moment she appears, Claire is a grating presence, feeling the need to yap yap yap when all Catherine would like is some peace and quiet so she can hear herself think. She can't wait for her meddlesome, irritating sister to get back on the plane!!! Claire seems worried that Catherine isn't capable of figuring out what to do now, but Catherine is already getting herself together and experiencing a little happiness. A former student of her Dad's, Hal Dobbs (Sisto) has been hanging around the house looking over the numerous notebooks Robert left behind, trying to decipher whether he had come up with any more wonderful math stuff before he died. Hal's search has been disappointing, most of the writing is simply the scribbling of a sick man at the autumn of life. Catherine and Hal squabble over whether or not the million and three papers Dad wrote on are all going to end up being jibberish, and the play, mostly a drama, has some really good laughs because of all too human humor, even some gallows humor. Catherine is witnessed talking to herself (or talking to her dead Dad) and right away, it's questionable whether or not she's mentally okay. The fact that Catherine loves math as much as Robert did might be an indicator that she's heading down the exact same wonderful/terrible route.
After Robert is laid to rest, Catherine and Hal realize they've always liked each other and end up sleeping together, and this is the start of Catherine getting on with her life. It's a step in the right direction.
Unfortunately, sister Claire thinks Catherine has gone crazy in the years she lived alone with Dad, and thinks Caty ought to move to New York so that Claire can "look after" her. She says insulting things like, "I think you have a lot of Dad's talent, and a lot of his instability."
Claire is a character you love to hate. A self centered, nosy, and, as the play progresses, downright manipulative personality, a busy-body who thinks she's got such a perfect, rounded life that she needs to tell everyone else where they've gone wrong. It's a good thing Hal is around for Catherine. He is everyone's dream of a boyfriend for any gal who has evil family trying to run her life...until...
Catherine hands Hal a paper containing some mind-boggling mathematics. Hal is thrilled, thinking this must be the final work of Robert, the eleventh hour recovery of a dying genius. When Catherine informs both Hal and Claire that the work is in fact hers, her sister and new boyfriend have a difficult time believing her. Claire of course all but flat out calls Catherine a liar, unable to believe that her sister could write such a monumental paper without telling the whole world about it. Hal is unsure. The math is, in his words, "historic". How could Catherine, who was unable to finish even her first semester without having to quit and come back home for Dad, crank out such advanced material???
Feeling victimized by Claire and betrayed by Hal, Catherine goes through a brief catatonic period (or simply, she refused to speak to her bitch of a sister). Catherine's attempt to get Claire back on her damn plane and out of Catherine's sight for a while backfires, and Claire postpones her flight to stay and "look after" Catherine, whom Claire is now convinced, is a loon. When Hal comes to the door hoping to speak to Catherine, Claire shoos him away, saying, "She's moving to New York, where I can keep my eye on her!!!" When Hal asks to borrow the controversial math proof so that he and his friends can analyze it, Claire says some really insulting things to him, like, "I think you're an idiot, but you're not dishonest!!!" And telling him he was just taking advantage of poor Catherine when he slept with her. What a bitch!!!
Hal is a great character. Not a nut or a brat or a manipulative schemer like a lot of Sisto's characters. Hal really cares about Catherine and wants to make an apology for not believing her. He realizes Catherine is a very gifted mathematician, just like her late father, even if she did not get to finish school. He realizes Catherine is a grown woman, and that she deserves better than what Claire is trying to do to her. Just in time, he comes back to the house. It's hard to say whether or not he was able to talk Catherine into staying in Chicago, but unless Catherine was a real dope, and I know she wasn't, simply because she saw thru her sister's shenanigans, she told Claire to get lost and moved into Hal's place!!! The ending dialogue, where Catherine is analyzing her problem out loud while Hal listens, is proof enough, no pun intended, that Catherine and Hal were going to be okay.
PROOF is what I would consider a romantic comedy-drama. It's not about math at all. It's about a family and the changes that occur when someone dies, it's about a daughter growing up and facing adulthood, and it's about discovering that someone who believes in you. That sort of romance is kind of rare these days. Some guy you met a while back, thought was kind of cute, and met up with again later and fell in love with, with most of the love stemming from the fact that they know (or have come to know) your talents, dreams and ambitions, and want to be along for the ride. I guess the structure of it just seems almost old fashioned, the kind of romantic stuff that you'd see in older movies.
A big plus of course, for me, is that the gifted protag is female. GOOD WILL HUNTING and A BEAUTIFUL MIND had male protags, and until I heard this play, I'd never heard or seen any movie or play about a female who loved and was good with math, which is a science that is traditionally male-dominant. Hal is a math instructor himself, having been preceptored by Robert himself, but even Hal admits that he has an only average mind compared to those of Robert and Catherine.
Still, again, this story is not about math, but about how life constantly changes and how surprising it can be, and how it can offer a new direction to someone who feels like she's lost.
It's a great play and deserves at least an A, if not an A+!!!