MORGANTOWN – You’ve soldiered through enough tense Thanksgiving dinners to know: Families aren’t like mathematical equations.
That is, people and personalities don’t always fit into logical columns and sequences.
Motivations are enigmatic – opposed to algebraic.
And the probability (or not) of mental illness and other debilitating conditions being passed down can be wrenching, in the wondering.
So goes the premise of West Virginia Public Theatre’s production of “Proof,” which opens Wednesday in Morgantown.
It runs through Sunday at the Gladys G. Davis Theatre, in the Canady Creative Arts Center at West Virginia University. Visit West Virginia Public Theatre’s Facebook page for ticket prices and other particulars.
David Auburn wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning play, which adds up what happens next following the death of Robert, a brilliant mathematician whose mental illness finally led to his fatal spiral down.
There’s Robert’s daughter, Catherine, who subtracted her ambition and dreams to be his caregiver, as he struggled.
And her estranged sister, Claire, who may, or not be, tabulating a trajectory for Catherine’s life, now that their father is gone.
Hal, too: He’s a former student of Robert’s who may have devices on his professor’s intellectual property – 103 notebooks full of equations and ideas, in particular.
While Catherine has apparently inherited her dad’s talent for numbers, there’s one other worry. Has she also inherited the same emotional imbalances that precipitated his breakdown in the first place?
“The real trick of writing the play was figuring out how much math to put into it,” Auburn told PBS in 2001.
“That a number of famous mathematicians have suffered from mental illness kind of gave me the bridge to the other idea about someone worried about their own mental state,” the playwright continued.
“So it just seemed to fit the story that I wanted to tell.”
Jerry McGonigle, the artistic director of West Virginia Public Theatre, said he likes the dichotomy of Auburn’s storytelling.
“Math is logical and families aren’t,” he said. “This is just a good play. The dialogue is real. You can relate to the characters. And it does end on an uplifting note.”
