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Reviews are in for the first Broadway revival of Proof, David Auburn’s Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning play. The limited, 16-week engagement, directed by Thomas Kail, is in performances now at the Booth Theatre. Get all the critics reactions in our review roundup!
Helen Shaw, The New York Times: Still, the father-daughter pair does, at least, perform charmingly together. Cheadle and Edebiri are both down-to-earth and unshowy in their clear affection for each other, and they’re warmly believable as parent and child. Cheadle is laid back to the point of liquidity; he’s the only star I’ve ever seen get entrance applause for lying on a love-seat. Edebiri, though, is in another league. At several points, she manages a crucial stage trick: She can seem to shrink, collapsing inward, while the audience registers an expanding sense of presence. It will serve her beautifully in other roles.
Aramide Timubu, Variety: “Proof” remains a scintillating play. Its questions about hereditary mental illness, the truth, and who can be labeled a genius — especially with a Black woman at the center — continue to resonate. Cheadle, Young, and Ha deliver effortless portrayals. They anchor the story in time and space with dynamic, heartfelt performances. Yet, because Edebiri simply doesn’t work as the lead, this revival doesn’t quite knock it out of the park.
Richard Lawson, The Guardian: A few technical missteps are nonetheless minor compared with the serious performance troubles at the heart of Kail’s Proof. And yet, the unassuming strength of Auburn’s writing manages to shine through that onslaught of actorly miscalculation. We still crave answers to the play’s mild mysteries, still chuckle ruefully at its subtly recurring motifs. This production’s handwriting may be awfully messy, but the basic math of it all is sound as ever.
Greg Evans, Deadline: You don’t have to come equipped with a knowledge of super-advanced mathematics, or even know what two-plus-two equals, to grasp, from the very start of Thomas Kail’s new revival of David Auburn’s Proof, that Ayo Edebiri, so good on TV’s restaurant drama (or comedy?) The Bear, and the Oscar-winning Don Cheadle are about to make something special of their Broadway debuts.
Adam Feldman, Time Out New York: They all have moments, but the equilibrium is off, and the pace lags when Claire is offstage. I would be interested to see Proof later in the run, when Edebiri has relaxed into her role and the production has had more time to work out the lumps, the approximations, the spots where you can see the stitches. It gets where it needs to go; what it lacks, at least for now, is elegance.
Charles Isherwood, The Wall Street Journal: A quietly transfixing performance from Ayo Edebiri provides reason enough to see the Broadway revival of “Proof,” David Auburn’s Pulitzer Prize- and Tony-winning drama, first staged in 2000. Ms. Edebiri won an Emmy for the TV series “The Bear,” which seems to be the new go-to source for Broadway marquees this season. (Both stars of “Dog Day Afternoon,” Jon Bernthal and Ebon Moss-Bachrach, also collected Emmys for the show.) Here she undertakes a role that won a Tony for Mary-Louise Parker, and gives a performance that equals hers and yet feels entirely fresh and fully reimagined.
Robert Hofler, The Wrap: Edebiri won an Emmy playing a depressive character on “The Bear,” but there, it’s a supporting character and it’s television. On stage, in her Broadway debut, Edebiri leaves it to the other actors to carry the drama. That’s not a great choice, but it makes for an effective first act, because the other actors are so good. In the second act, Catherine becomes fully alive. She takes control of her life, and in facing that character’s struggles head-on, Edebiri has to deliver a more vivid performance. Instead, she retreats to mannerisms, delivering facial tics and verbal hesitations. There’s a big hole in the middle of this “Proof.”
Roma Torre, New York Stage Review: Of course it helps to have a production team sharing the same vision. This one achieves symmetry with the show’s protagonists who liken their best math theorems to music. Directed by Thomas Kail, it all comes together with a lyrical grace.
Steven Suskin, New York Stage Review: The play parades as a drama about math, mathematicians, and elusive formulas that can shake up the world—the academic world, at least—if only some brilliant mind can find the key. In truth, though, the play centers on those key words: the “brilliant mind” and what happens when the once-brilliant mind is pushed into oblivion. In 2000, it was a question of the great thinker losing his mind. What makes this new production at the Booth even more powerful than before is today’s audience—that is, our collective knowledge and experience with depression, dementia, and despair. This was always there in the text, yes, but it now comes across with added urgency and personal relevance. The majority of today’s audience, of course, will be seeing Proof for the first time. For them, the experience will be that of attending a vibrant and provocative new play.
Emlyn Travis, Entertainment Weekly: More than two decades after the Tony- and Pulitzer-winning play first debuted on Broadway, David Auburn’s rumination on genius, legacy, and complicated family dynamics has returned to the Great White Way for the first time ever in an intriguing revival led by Emmy winners Ayo Edebiri and Don Cheadle. While it may take the production a moment to fully kick into gear, Proof’s effective performances from its four-member cast will keep theatergoers engrossed in all of its mathematical complexities and human eccentricities until the very end. Grade: B
Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune: “Proof” is one of the best American dramas to emerge in the last decade of the 20th century, a script ripe for revival not least for how beautifully it focuses on a little family of imperfect humans, all loving each other in their own flawed ways and better able to deal with monumental thoughts than the thornier challenges of just getting out of bed when grief has overtaken you. It’s a lovely Chicago play, brought thrillingly back to Broadway life.
Thom Geier, Culture Sauce: Ayo Edibiri and Don Cheadle are two of our finest screen performers, radiating an intelligence and likability that should serve them well in the first Broadway revival of David Auburn’s Pulitzer-winning 2000 drama Proof. They play a father and daughter bound together by a love of advanced mathematics, a connection that’s further honed when Edibiri’s Catherine postpones college to care for Cheadle’s professor father during his troubled final years. And yet director Thomas Kail’s production feels more dutiful than deep, an oddly bloodless exercise in melodrama that keeps its passions bundled up as if girding for a frigid Chicago winter.
Jonathan Mandell, New York Theater: An odd feature of the set is that the old-fashioned back porch during scene changes is suddenly outlined in lights that travel along rectangular path — the window frames, and doorways, etc. This may be an effort to evoke modern tech (much like the design of the recent play “Data”) and thus give the production a more up-to-date feel. But it’s the casting that helps bring “Proof” genuinely up to date. Since the play’s original run, we’ve become more aware real-life pioneers, such as in the the 2016 book and movie “Hidden Figures,” based on the true story of the accomplishments made by, and discrimination faced by, Katherine Johnson, a mathematician and two colleagues, all of them Black women, who worked for NASA. It feels worth mentioning that, if there is such a thing as a famous mathematician these days (presently alive, as opposed to, say, Pythagoras or Euclid, or Isaac Newton) it would Terence Tao, a naturalized American citizen born of Chinese immigrant parents in Australia, who is a professor at UCLA.
Joe Dziemianowicz, New York Theatre Guide: It’s altogether a pleasure to watch the play unfold, as it makes room for hope. Mathematicians seek to eliminate ambiguity, but life’s not like that. But there are zero debates about the cast stepping up. As Claire, Young, a four-time Tony nominee who’s won for Purlie Victorious and Purpose, hits all her notes as the acerbic and bossy but loving sister. Ha brings heaps of dorky appeal as Hal, who’s drawn to Catherine — and to a shot at advancing his career. Cheadle fills the addled dad with heart and raw vulnerability.
Brian Scott Lipton, Cititour: Indeed, for all its prior accolades, “Proof” rarely rises above being a compelling character study, without much implication of any larger questions outside those four Chicago walls. However, with such fine acting on display, there’s more than enough to warrant a visit (return to otherwise) and the chance to witness one of the most exciting Broadway debuts I’ve ever seen!
Average Rating:
71.3%
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