FREEFALL PRESENTS DAVID AUBURN’S PROOF @ NEW THEATRE NEWTOWN

FeaturedPic

Production photography by Michael Snow,

This is a marvellous play by David Auburn about courage, doubt, faith, love, and genius. The play has won a Pulitzer prize, the New York Drama Critics award and a Tony award. The current New Theatre production is directed by Derek Walker.

Catherine lived with her father for the last years of his life, as her father, once a famous Mathematician, slides into mental illness and death. She herself is a gifted mathematician who may have inherited at least some of his genius but seems have been wasting her time (and her own genius) away. Or has she?!

This is the central conundrum of the play, and the answer to it unfold steadily to a dramatic conclusion.

Catherine (Ylaria Rogers) plays the part of a prickly defensive daughter who at times is battling to defend her reality. Her sister Claire (Julia Christensen) seeks to take her back with her to New York against her will and, as well, her relationship with one of her father’s prized students Hal (Alex Brown) is crumbling. Then there are scenes of her with her father…or are some of them imagined? Notions of reality and unreality, the credible and the incredible, love and caring give the play its tension.

Ylaria Rogers is very persuasive as the seemingly unstable Catherine with Peter Flett convincing as the loving father and mathematical genius  disintegrating as his life comes to an end.

The dialogue is compelling  and the ending moving and thought provoking.

This production is further evidence, in my view, that Sydney has world class theatre, relatively inexpensive, but about which too few Sydneysiders  seem to be aware, or proud of.

A Freefall production, in association with the New Theatre, PROOF is playing the New Theatre, 542 King Street, Newtown until  30th July.

http://www.newtheatre.org.au