Continuing with the second selection in its inaugural season, Bloomsbury House Stage Productions chose the powerful and emotionally charged David Auburn play Proof to tantalize Windsor audiences. It’s a passionate and intelligent story about fathers and daughters and the nature of pure genius and could easily be a contender for the best drama in the city so far this year.
Director Carly Morrison-Hart gave the show a simple set, relying mostly on her actors to tell the story. And what a cast she’s assembled - Samantha Lillian (Catherine), Shayla Hudson (Claire), Dalton Mugridge (Hal) and Bob Steele (Robert) are a pure joy to watch in this clever and brilliant script.
It tells the story of Catherine, who has inherited her late father’s mathematical brilliance, but she is haunted by the fear that she might also share his debilitating mental illness. She has spent years caring for her now-deceased father, and upon his death, she feels left alone to pick up the pieces of her life without him. Caught between a new-found connection with Hal, one of her father’s former students, and the reappearance of her sister, Claire, Catherine finds both her world and her mind growing increasingly unstable. Then Hal discovers a groundbreaking proof among the 103 notebooks Catherine’s father left behind and that’s when the story gets really interesting.
The Bloomsbury production gives some insight into why Auburn was awarded the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and a Tony Award for Best Play. It’s a brilliant show. Lillian gave the role everything she had and the effort paid off - this shows a bit of her theatrical genius (all while playing a genius) and her accompanying cast members are equally charming, including an amazing performance from Steele, who offered equal amounts of intelligence and insanity to Robert.
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