By Edward Kinman

Waterworks Players proudly presents David Auburn’s Proof, one of Broadway’s most celebrated plays in recent years, winner of both the 2001 Tony Award for Best Play and the Pulitzer Prize in drama.  While Proof is a story about mathematicians, it's more about what goes on in their hearts than their heads.  Set on a home porch in Chicago, the play explores the complex formulas of love, trust and fear that bind a family together, for better or worse.

The play opens with Catherine (Linda Sauve) having a midnight conversation, either a dream or delusion, with her father, Robert (Dudley Sauve), who died a week earlier of heart failure. Robert was a mathematics professor at the University of Chicago.  While showing brilliance early in his career, he falls to bouts of mental illness interspersed with spells of clarity.

Catherine also possesses a brilliant mind with similar promise as her father, but was sidetracked professionally by her decision to live with and care for her father in his last years. She may also have a bit of her father’s delusional madness or, as likely, an active dream life coupled with a stiff dose of depression that is understandable under her circumstances.

In the wake of her father's death, Catherine's world is in upheaval. Not only has her last five years of life been on hold, but how much of her father’s genius-or madness-will she inherit?  Her long absent sister Claire (Elizabeth Wiley) arrives to sell the house and whisk Catherine away to New York and Hal (Aaron Willoughby) a devoted former student of her father arrives to pore through the dead man's madcap journals in search of mathematical genius. With Hal also comes romance for Catherine, who seems to have long gone without while caring for her batty old man.

When Hal discovers a proof for a mathematical theorem in the family’s attic that most had thought impossible, the bonds among all three are tested to their limits as they search for the truth about the proof's author as Catherine stuns Hal by claiming she wrote the proof.

But did she?

The handwriting in the notebook looks like her father's.  As the mystery develops and resolves, the drama explores issues such as what the link may be between genius and madness and whether either or both can be inherited. But Proof is also a story about human relationships, suggesting that developing trust and love can be as difficult, and just as uncertain, as establishing the truth of a mathematical proof.

Make reservations now for Waterworks Players' production of Proof and see if it isn’t the perfect solution for an entertaining evening. Performances are at 8:00 pm on September 19, 20, 26 and 27. Tickets are $10. You can obtain tickets by calling the box office at 434-392-3452 or visiting the Waterworks web site: http://waterworksplayers.org.