Title: Proof
Location: The Booth Theatre
Written By: David Auburn
Summary: A revival of the 2001 Tony-winning play that was so popular it went on tour and was adapted into a film, about a math professor and his daughter who share an exceptional ability for math, and also possibly a tendency towards mental illness.
Highlights: I love this play, and not just because I love a math/theater crossover. It's a smart, funny, poignant story of fathers and daughters, of sisters, of family legacy vs. individual identity. I've seen it a half dozen times, but this is the first time I've seen a Black family as the central family. There's no reason this Chicago math professor and his two daughters, one a messy and awkward and brilliant woman who sacrificed her education to care for her father, the other a polished and successful businesswoman in New York City, can't be Black. It's just never been cast this way before (that I've seen), and this casting, this diversity and visibility to what a Black family can be, is important. It was the most diverse audience of all the shows I attended on Broadway this weekend, and that also matters. This first Broadway revival 25 years after its premiere features the Broadway debut of two actors familiar from TV and movies - the veteran of stage and screen (and theater, just not yet Broadway) Don Cheadle, and one of the hottest new actors of recent years, Ayo Edebiri, who won all of the awards for her role on The Bear. She's so great as Catherine (a role that won Mary Louise Parker a Tony) - at times funny and tough and awkward, at other times raw and vulnerable. Ayo could have used her recent success to do anything, and she chose to do Broadway, and this specific play. It was a pleasure and a privilege to witness. As it was to see Don Cheadle in this role of the father, the mentor, the scholar, and the man losing his grip on reality, and the math that means so much to him. Completing the strong four-person cast are Kara Young as Claire, who swoops into town and attempts to set things right, arguing with Catherine like sisters do; and Jin Ha as Catherine's adorklable love interest. The entire play takes place outside the family home in Chicago, represented on stage as the frame of a house containing a scrim that is either see-through to the stairs behind it, or opaque with light blue siding like a realistic house, as we move from reality to... somewhere else. With direction by Hamilton's Thomas Kail, it's a well-staged, well-cast, strong revival of this Pulitzer Prize-winning play that's been frequently done in regional theaters around the country (including here in #TCTheater as recently as last year), and finally made its way back home to Broadway. (Note: I saw Proof in its first week of previews; it officially opens on April 16.)
*Once again, I'm using an abbreviated Fringe-style summary for my NYC 2026 trip, since I am in the greatest city in the world with much more exciting things to do than write! Click here to see all of my Broadway-related blog posts.
