The plot of David Auburn’s Tony Award-winning play revolves around a groundbreaking mathematical proof at the University of Chicago, but he never reveals what the proof is for. Unlike Tom Stoppard’s “Arcadia,” in which the young 19th Century heroine uncovers the roots of chaos theory more than 150 years before the rest of the world, Auburn’s Catherine is bedeviled by personal chaos, not mathematical complexities.
Auburn’s play contains enough wit and humanity to overcome the facile plot twist at its center. Frank Merle’s staging for Keyhole Theatre Company dispenses with the intermission, so the hoariness of the revelation doesn’t linger. This is the first production in Keyhole’s current season devoted to Pulitzer Prize-winning plays, and given that John Madden’s film version starring Gwyneth Paltrow (who also played Catherine in a West End production directed by Madden) is at the multiplexes, it makes sense from a marketing standpoint as well.
But it’s also a play that has been oft-produced here (Chuck Smith’s African-American take on it played the Goodman in 2004). Merle’s staging is warmhearted but decidedly uneven, particularly in Erin Killean’s overly hesitant performance as Catherine.
Killean has a knack for Catherine’s offhanded one-liners, as when she tells her sister, “Don’t lie to me, Claire. I’m smarter than you.” It’s difficult to portray emotional paralysis in a way that holds an audience spellbound, but Killean’s uncertainty feels as if it comes from an actor still struggling to find the role’s defining note, rather than Catherine’s own survival strategy of retreat in the face of betrayal.
But there are absolutely glowing scenes between Killean and Charles Riffenburg, who plays Hal, her mad-genius father’s student (this sentence as published has been corrected in this text). Riffenburg is able to convince us that he holds his affections for Catherine and his desire for career advancement in equal measures. Wendy Hart plays Claire, an admittedly shallow character, as the rational number in the family equation, one with real concern for her little sister. The parts of this production don’t add up to a completely satisfying whole, and the indelible Hyde Park setting doesn’t come across in the limited schoolroom theater at Keyhole’s disposal, but it’s still a sweet and occasionally thought-provoking portrait of how one troubled young woman comes to terms with her past and her destiny.
“Proof”
When: Through Oct. 30
Where: Josephinum, 1500 N. Bell Ave.
Running time: 1 hour, 35 minutes
Tickets: $15 at 773-805-5055
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