Some folks fit comfortably into their genes. Others don't. And for those who post the number of the neighborhood sanitarium on a fridge magnet, there's Proof, David Auburn's Pulitzer/Tony-winner testifying to the connective tissue from genius to madness, genetics to love, father to daughter.
Launching Nevada Conservatory Theatre's main-stage season at UNLV, Proof takes wing on a soaring, roaring lead performance by theater major Melony E. Franchini, a petite actress with fire-breathing stage presence.
She stars as Catherine, twentysomething daughter and caretaker to her irascible papa, Robert (Equity actor Jeff Craggs), a brilliant, increasingly batty mathematician/professor in the Chicago 'burbs. Her pressure cooker inches toward boiling with the arrival of estranged sister, Claire (Dana Martin), who attempts to orchestrate Catherine's life. Then there's the growing affection between Catherine and Hal (Robert D. Howard), Dad's ex-student, who's combing through Robert's notebooks for breakthrough mathematical "proofs" and leaves her suspicious of his motives: romantic interest or academic glory?
Plus the capper, weighing on her fragile psyche: Did Catherine inherit Daddy's genius gene or his molecular madness? Or both?
Structurally, Proof echoes the circuitous loops and liberating whirl of the creative mind, toying with time and perception. Scenes suggesting flashbacks, or moments in Catherine's psyche, leapfrog with real-time narrative, defying conventional linear thought, just as the process of creativity is a playground for intellectual chaos, the brain flinging around ideas like sloppy mud pies, until they somehow coalesce into a sleek piece of art that exists on its own plane of logic.
It's the yin and yang of madness and magic, the former—at tolerably low levels for most artists—essential to the latter. But Proof asks us to consider life inside that dangerous red zone, where madness threatens to overwhelm magic, and that impact on filial love.
The piece plays out on the family's front porch (designed with a red-brick warmth by Charles O'Connor that includes a beat-up VW in the yard). It opens with brittle, snappish Catherine fending off Dad's concerned queries about her closed-off life, until we realize Dad is dead. We're off on a stroll through Catherine's subconscious until Hal comes around, forcing her to confront her fears of what comes next—insanity, perhaps?—in her life. He's got a puppy-dog appeal, she's erected an emotional fortress around herself, but their halting moves toward each other are charming.
Their relationship is interrupted when sister Claire—a practical woman free of Dad's extremes—arrives to help with the funeral, and pressures Catherine to return to New York with her, suggesting she may require professional looking-after. Act I climaxes in a twist, the authenticity of which, and Catherine's mental state, are debated in Act II.
The production—leavened by moments of hilarity and directed by Robert Brewer with an eye toward character and clarity—is galvanized by Franchini, whose demure appearance belies her eruptive performance. When initially glimpsed, she looks all of 14 and seems overwhelmed just by the oversized U-of-Chicago sweatshirt billowing around her. But she impressively rises to the role's emotional demands, by turns bitterly angry, bitingly funny and alarmingly unstable, a crackling live wire shooting off sparks. Howard and Martin provide solid support. Only Craggs, the cast's sole pro, underwhelms as the patriarch threatening to run off the rails. Shambling around in a shapeless sweater, creased pants, gray beard and Cubs cap nails the externals, but there's an internal fire missing from his portrayal.
But the mesmerizing Franchini is this show's great equalizer, the incontrovertible Proof of its power.