BEST ACTRESS

American Stage gave Tanner a terrific part a few months ago, and the result was a performance that will linger in the mind for years. Tanner was Catherine in David Auburn’s Proof, a play about the daughter of a famous mathematician, and about her troubled inheritance — of her father’s genius and, perhaps, his madness. Tanner took this complex part and didn’t miss a contradictory detail: She was brilliant, impulsive, angry, sarcastic, subject to depression, worried for her mental health, funny, compassionate, irritable and tender. - Mark E. Leib