Proof that Proof was SUPER underrated

Hey guys! For those of you just joining, my name is Miren. I’m a teenager born and raised in Manhattan who loves Broadway, and here on Encore By Miren, I share my unfiltered takes on the latest shows, interview people from the industry (coming super super soon!!) and give you a look at Broadway from the perspective of an NYC teen!

Up next is my review of Proof.

Guys, I think this show is SO ridiculously underrated. It is completely incredible, and honestly the fact that it didn’t get nominated for any Tony awards is insane to me.

Background

The main story follows Catherine (played by Ayo Edebiri), the daughter of a mathematical genius Robert (played by Don Cheadle) who is grieving his death. She’s working through his old papers and dealing with the aftermath of his passing while struggling with her own mental health and depression.

The play switches between the past and present, giving us a dual perspective. The side plot features Hal (played by Jin Ha) as a graduate student who studied under Robert. He starts helping Catherine organize her dad's old notebooks. She’s super closed off from the world, but Hal wants to get closer to her and knows there’s a hidden layer there.

Then comes the big twist: Hal finds one of the most brilliant mathematical formulas ever discovered in one of the notebooks—a formula people thought was impossible to create. But Catherine claims that she wrote it, not her father! Catherine’s sister, Claire (played by Adrienne Warren) doesn’t believe her and thinks that Catherine is suffering a mental break.

From there, the show forces us to make a choice: do we believe her, or do we believe her sister? (When I went, her sister was played by Adrienne Warren, who I saw in The Last Five Years—another insanely underrated show that people talked way too much trash about, but I thought was great!). Adrienne was incredible, she played the role with so much emotion. You can tell she genuinely cares, even while trying to uproot her sister's life from their dad's house in Chicago to move her to New York. There's this super interesting struggle with identity and sisterhood when they aren't even that close.

Just before intermission, when Catherine  tells Claire and Hal  that she wrote the formula, neither of them believes her at first. By the end, we don't even know if Hal truly believes her or not. We have to choose what we think happened and decide her fate ourselves, which I found super interesting!

What Stood Out

First of all, the opening! It starts off with Catherine and Robert celebrating her birthday together, and as the scene goes on, you slowly start to realize that Robert is actually dead and she’s talking to herself. Because we see most of the show through Catherine’s eyes, and she's actively hallucinating her dead father, we basically get an unreliable narrator, which was so cool to watch play out.

Also, I have to talk about the set! It’s set at her father’s house, and seeing it change through the passage of time was super interesting.

Rush 

I really wanted to see Proof so recently, I decided to rush for it. Th

e box office opens at 10:00 so I showed up around 8:30 and was first in line! (if you’re a Broadway person, you know how good that is because some box offices (*cough cough* Lost Boys and The Outsiders) that also open at 10 have a line of 30+ people at 8:30! 

Stage Door

I actually met both Adrienne and Ayo at the stagedoor-- a Wednesday matinee! They were both super lovely and both came out in under 30 min so I think it was definitely worth it!

Overall…

The entire cast, Ayo Edebiri, Don Cheadle, Jin Ha, and Adrienne Warren, were all amazing. The show manages to be devastating in some ways, but also funny and light in others. It w

as100% wo

rth seeing, and I would say it is one of the best shows this season! I'm so sad it closed!

Rating: 8.5/10