Proof: Good start for a new theater company

It’s always pleasing to welcome a new and ambitious theater company to the Bay area. Innovocative Theatre, headed by Staci Sabarsky, made a big impression on me a few months ago when it offered the stunning Dark Vanilla Jungle at the Tampa International Fringe Festival, and now it has teamed with Stageworks to bring us its first mainstage show, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Proof. If this production isn’t quite as successful as Jungle, it still offers two memorable performances and first-rate design. With its next show already planned — Jane Martin’s Keely & Du is coming in January — Innovocative seems poised to become a significant player in a theater scene that urgently needs more production companies. I wish its creators all the best as it discovers its strengths, solves its weaknesses, and brings us Off-Broadway and regional theater pieces we would otherwise miss.

Proof is about Catherine (Marie-Claude Tremblay), a young mathematician whose father Robert (Dennis Duggan) was a celebrated genius before mental illness reduced him to scribbling nonsense. As we learn from the chronologically out-of-order scenes of the play’s two acts, Catherine gave up her college education in order to look after her father once his mind got clouded. But now Robert has died, and Catherine’s sister Claire (Sabarsky) has come for the funeral and to try to entice Catherine — whose own mental state Claire finds dubious — to relocate to New York. To complicate matters further, Robert’s former student Hal has been spending hours in Catherine’s house, searching Robert’s notebooks for any moments of brilliance the mathematician might have had during his moments of lucidity. As Catherine, Hal and Claire work out their difficult relationships, and as a possibly earth-shattering proof turns up in a special notebook, we’re faced with questions of feminism, mental health, sibling tension, and sexual propriety.

Bringing it to life are four actors, two of whom are outstanding. Tremblay provides a surprising interpretation of Catherine, playing her as gloomy, moody, and quite possibly subject to some of the same disabling forces that undermined her father’s psyche. I’ve seen two other Catherines in two other productions of Proof, and in both cases they were upbeat, charming, and, from any perspective, sane. Not so Tremblay’s approach: Her Catherine is touchy and troubled, and you can’t ignore the possibility that she’s not entirely healthy. This matters a lot; it colors our understanding of her relationship with Hal, with that proof I mentioned and, not least, with her sister — who in this rendition has good reason for trying to get her out of Chicago. I don’t think the play makes total sense with a less-than-sane Catherine, but I respect Tremblay’s gamble in playing more anti-heroine than heroine. Like a cheerful song transposed to a minor, turbulent key, this portrayal has overtones that the other versions never suggested.

Devin Devi’s acting as Hal is less complicated — and nearly impeccable. This Hal is a good-natured, pleasant nerd who’d never think of making a pass at Catherine — she’s less inhibited, as it turns out — and who seems comfortable as one of life’s less demanding creatures. He’s a recognizable (but not stereotypical) figure: The hyper-intelligent graduate student who’ll spend his whole life in universities, focusing on subjects that most of the population has next to no understanding of. The other two actors aren’t nearly as convincing. Sabarsky — also the play’s director — comes across as a two-dimensional Claire, hardly appearing to have an existence outside her concern for Catherine’s sanity, and Duggan, who was so spectacular in Of Mice and Men a few years ago, seems passive and harmless, not for a minute a great thinker whose impact is still roiling the world of mathematics. Sabarsky’s direction is fine, though, and Jeannine Borzello’s set, of the back and backyard of Robert and Catherine’s two-story house, is entirely persuasive.    

If there’s an overarching theme in Proof, it’s the difficulty of really knowing another human being. Catherine may or may not be sane and a prodigy; Robert may or may not be afflicted or in remission; Hal may be intending to exploit Robert’s legacy; Claire may be secretly planning to have Catherine committed… Watching these four characters navigate so many uncertainties, we’re reminded that we too are largely ignorant about each other and need to tread carefully before we claim true understanding. Even in a less-than-perfect production, this idea is well-communicated and resonates beyond the final curtain.

So welcome, Innovocative Theatre: You’ve made a likable mainstage start.

I look forward to seeing you develop and flourish. 

Mark E. Leib's theater criticism for CL has won seven awards for excellence from the Society for Professional Journalists. His own plays have been produced Off-Broadway and in Chicago, Cambridge, Edinburgh, and the Tampa Bay Area. He is a Continuing Instructor at USF, and has an MFA in Playwriting from the Yale School of Drama, where he won the CBS Foundation Prize in Playwriting. Contact him here.

This article appears in Jul 20-27, 2017.