[NEohioPAL] Actor's Summit shines in award-winning play PROOF review by Beacon Journal

[Thackaberr at aol.com]

Actor's  Summit shines in  award-winning play  
Father  and daughter team have leads in David Auburn's 'Proof.' Hudson 
company's excellent  production moving and credible  
Published  on Sunday, Jan 13, 2008  
Proof is a play about  math only in the way that The Wizard of Oz was a play 
about tornadoes. Math is  what drives three of the main characters in David 
Auburn's 2001 Tony  Award-winning play, but it's not the point of the drama. In 
the Actor's  Summit's  excellent new production, a family sorts itself out, 
not through mathematical  proofs but through honest, often raw, dialogue, 
Friday night, director  Wayne Turney led one of the strongest shows I've seen 
by the Hudson company. Despite a  few rough spots that will presumably smooth 
out as the production continues, the  cast cohered admirably well. 
A table and chairs in  front of a pair of doors simulates the porch of the 
family home in Chicago's Hyde Park  neighborhood. Actor's Summit's co-artistic 
director and founder, A. Neil  Thackaberry, has immersed himself in the role of 
Robert, a math whiz and  professor at the University of Chicago who peaked 
early, then declined into  mental illness. Robert's mind for numbers has lost 
its edge, but he can still  deliver poetic zingers about life — even after his 
death. 
Constance Thackaberry,  Neil's daugher, is occasionally self-conscious in the 
role of Robert's daughter,  Catherine, a promising mathematician who quit 
school at Northwestern to take  care of her father in Hyde Park. Catherine's  
malaise smacks more of bratty 20-something attitude than the clinical depression  
the playwright has specified. Yet elements of her portrayal are excellent.  
Thackaberry makes you feel her conflicting emotions about her controlling,  
annoyingly perfect older sister, Claire (Alicia Kahn), who comes to visit the  
family home on Chicago's South Side for Robert's  funeral. 
The actors create a  credible kinship between Catherine and Robert, setting 
them apart from the  practical Claire. 
Keith Stevens brings  an intentionally awkward and endearing charm to the 
character of Harold Dobbs, a  former grad student of Robert's at U-C. Hal 
inadvertently pushes Catherine into  a defining moment when, while searching in the 
house for work by Robert, he  discovers a mathematical proof Catherine claims 
as her own. (In a flashback that  reveals U-C graduate Auburn's writing at its 
funniest, Robert  introduces Harold to Catherine by saying, ''Hal's in the 
infinity program.''  It's a telling detail about a university where I remember 
many doctoral students  being referred to as ''lifers.'' 
Constance  Thackaberry's Catherine seems quick enough to have written her own 
 groundbreaking proof. In this performance, there wasn't much tension over 
the  question. More edge in the air would further sharpen this production, but 
it's a  fine one nevertheless. 
Proof won not only the  2001 Tony for Best Play but the 2001 Pulitzer Prize 
for drama for playwright  David Auburn, whose family has long ties to the 
University of Akron. (Proof was also produced as a  movie, released in 2005.) Most 
recently, the son of Mark and Sandy Auburn wrote  and directed the movie The 
Girl in the Park, starring Sigourney Weaver and  released in 2007. Let's hope 
more plays are in store from this gifted  writer. 
  
____________________________________

Elaine Guregian can be  reached at 330-996-3574 or 
_eguregian at thebeaconjournal.com_ (http://www.ohio.com/lifestyle/mailto:eguregian@thebeaconjournal.com) .




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