★★★½☆ A dense text and technical foibles are overcome by superb acting in this company debut.

Alex Theatre, St. Kilda
June 9, 2016

Much like an advanced mathematical formula, David Auburn’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Proof, is at once intimidatingly dense and yet almost poetic in its elegance. In the vein of A Beautiful Mind or Good Will Hunting (both recent hits when Auburn penned this text in 2000), Proof stands the frailties of human emotion on the incompatible ground of intellectual genius, offering a relatable and touching story of grief, young love and sibling rivalry, anchored to the somewhat less accessible theme of mathematics.

We meet Catherine (Madeleine Jevic) on her 25th birthday. She and her father, Robert (Roy Barker) lock horns as she drinks the cheap Champagne knock-off he has bought her, straight from the bottle. It’s an age-old tussle: an exasperated parent desperately berating their offspring to make something of themselves, instead of sleeping till noon, wasting their precious youth; those years when their most exciting accomplishments may happen. Except this isn’t a typical conversation. Robert has been dead for a week, and Catherine’s precious youth has been squandered caring for him through...