Ayo Edebiri and Don Cheadle star in underpowered…
Theater review
PROOF
2 hours and half-hour, with one intermission. At the Booth Theatre, 222 W. forty fifth Street.
Just one piece of the first Broadway revival of David Auburn’s most well-known play solutions the query “What exactly is ‘Proof’ + 26 years?”
That’s Ayo Edebiri, the ever present actress from FX’s “The Bear” who performs grief-stricken Catherine, the position made well-known more than a quarter century in the past by a younger Mary Louise Parker.
The setting of the tight-as-a-drum drama, which opened Thursday evening at the Booth Theatre, hasn’t been moved from the early aughts. But Edebiri’s cringing, self-deprecating embodiment of a girl at her wit’s end couldn’t be more rooted in 2026 — a lot in the same approach Parker’s lauded flip was a mascot for the new millennium.
The authentic actress’ efficiency as a Chicago scholar whose famend mathematician father has just died is remembered for its directness, assured control of her character’s inappropriateity and untethered power.
Edebiri’s scaled-back model, with nary a trace of any of that, has Gen Z written all over it. Catherine recedes when confronted. She runs toward geekiness — not away from it. She hides from others utilizing a sense of humor that’s mainly for her own amusement, not for anyone else’s. Painful feelings make her bodily tremble while she fights to keep them down.
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Admirably, hers is a very different portrayal of Catherine than any I’ve seen before. At instances, it’s a very transferring one. And, while Edebiri’s interpretation received’t please all people or even gel with all the beats of the play — notably older sister Claire and new good friend Hal’s sexist insistence that Catherine couldn’t probably be a math wiz — the actress’ sheer modernity helps forestall “Proof” from feeling too retro.
Phew. Because director Thomas Kail actually isn’t serving to her on that entrance.
On a brilliant University of Chicago yard set by Teresa L. Williams that may very well be used on darkish nights for “Home Improvement Live!,” the person who staged “Hamilton” sheepishly delivers an uninspired guidelines of basic entrances and exits while batting away the many creative potentialities Auburn’s script gives.
Ayo Edebiri makes her Broadway debut in “Proof.” Matthew Murphy
After all, this is a show that begins with a fantasized dialog between a fraying daughter and her useless dad, Robert, dispassionately performed by Don Cheadle, and poignant reminiscence scenes from past years fade in dreamlike. Her father also suffered from dementia, and in flashbacks we witness his dangerous days and lucid days. The thoughts’s energy, or lack thereof, drives the story just as a lot as the acquainted household fights that cement it as a conventional American play do.
You see, “Proof” is packed with the potential for illuminating expressionism or thrilling deconstruction. There are ample alternatives to revive it.
Nah, said Kail. Have a pretend garden.
Don Cheadle performs Catherine’s father, Robert, a struggling math genius who’s died. Matthew Murphy
Stomping on plastic grass with Edebiri is Claire, Catherine’s high-strung, put-together sister who lives in New York and contributed money to dad’s care but saved her bodily distance away from Hyde Park. Shocker — that causes some friction.
Kara Young, a good performer who’s taken just 5 years to turn out to be a big purpose Broadway audiences buy tickets, stands out as she always does. Her humorous Claire, recognizable to anyone with a important sister, makes so many statements with her fingers it’s like she took a communications course at Cobra Kai.
As entertaining as Young is, though, her Claire is questionably sized larger than Catherine, dad and Hal (a candy Jin Ha), the hunky-dorky math scholar that Catherine is smitten with, placing the noticeably ensemble off stability.
Claire (Kara Young) jets to Chicago to help her sister. Matthew Murphy
And she’s not the only one out of sync. Cheadle’s common nonchalance robs his position of would-be shattering moments of influence. Whether Robert is at his lowest, scribbling gibberish in a pocket book in the frigid Chicago cold, or back to his outdated self taking Catherine to dinner for her birthday, he’s the same even-keeled man. A strong thread is thus snapped.
Yes, the show about mathematicians has its issues — Kail’s shrugging direction, such as it’s, being the largest. And yet Auburn’s ironclad script alone stays exceedingly pleasant, particularly for fortunate newbies who don’t know the bombshell that’s coming. Add to that Edebiri, who, while not giving the career-defining efficiency Parker did, is nonetheless value seeing.
Unlike with a proof, a few out-of-place components don’t always ship an complete manufacturing into the trash bin.
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