Backyard Renaissance Theatre Company’s Anthony Methvin and Francis Gercke share a longstanding connection to “Proof,” David Auburn’s Pulitzer-winning play about the dramas inside a mathematics-minded family.
You can do the math: Methvin, who’s directing Backyard Renaissance’s production of “Proof,” saw the play on Broadway more than 20 years ago at the Walter Kerr Theatre. “It touched me and moved me and made me think in ways that I’d never expected,” he recalled.
As for Gercke, he’s returning to the play as an actor exactly 20 years after he appeared in a San Diego Repertory Theatre production of “Proof.” This time instead of playing Hal, the ambitious young former student of brilliant mathematician Robert, Gercke is playing the older role.
Gercke says he’s looking at “Proof” today with the benefit of 20 years of “experience, mistakes and wrong turns. You start to realize some of the opportunities that David Auburn provided, whether those be for humor, storytelling or relationships. It’s a lot of fun, and it’s wonderfully daunting.”
The cast of Backyard Renaissance Theatre’s “Proof,” Francis Gercke, left, Liliana Talwatte, William Huffaker and Wendy Maples.
(Courtesy of Daren Scott)
“Proof” moves back and forth in time, with mental-illness-afflicted Robert having recently died at the outset. Flashbacks begin in Act Two, illuminating the conflicts between Robert and his equally brilliant daughter Catherine.
Rounding out the Backyard Renaissance cast are Liliana Talwatte as Catherine, who fears inheriting her father’s affliction; Wendy Maples as Catherine’s domineering older sister Claire; and William Huffaker as Hal, who has fallen for Catherine.
“Proof” opened on Broadway in 2000 with Mary-Louise Parker, who would win a Tony Award for her performance the following year, as Catherine. Though the play also won the Tony for Best Play and the aforementioned Pulitzer Prize for Drama, it is rarely produced. Since the San Diego Rep staging, only Poway Performing Arts Company (PowPAC) has presented it since, that in 2005.
“Like a lot of popular plays, it sort of disappeared, for a whole host of reasons,” said Gercke. “The neat thing about coming back to the play is that in revisiting it you can notice things about it you hadn’t before.”
Gercke and Methvin agree that while “Proof’s” principal characters are mathematicians, it is not a play about math, nor is knowledge about mathematics a requirement for appreciating Auburn’s story.
“The real strength of ‘Proof’ is he wrote a really well made play,” said Gercke. “It’s standing on the shoulders of every good decision that was made by playwrights going way back in regard to unity of time, place and action.
“It’s about a family with their own unique identities, dreams and ambitions who also have a desire to still function as a family, which anybody can identify with and lean into.”
Of Auburn’s script, Methvin said “Looking at the way the characters approach math, they are making math like music, this beautiful thing. Being able to spend time with these characters and to appreciate the commonality in humanity has been a discovery and a joy.”
It’s no surprise that the Backyard Renaissance team regards “Proof” as a play needed now more than ever.
“In a world that is dangerously cynical and dangerously skeptical and too cool for school,” said Gercke, “this play is about people who really care. They’re not above it all. They’re down in the guts of it.”
Backyard Renaissance Theatre presents ‘Proof’
When: Previews today through Nov. 24. Opens Nov. 25 and runs through Dec. 9. Showtimes: 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays; 3 p.m. Sundays
Where: Tenth Avenue Arts Center, 930 Tenth Ave., downtown
Tickets: $18-$40
Phone: (760) 975-7189
Online: backyardrenaissance.com
Coddon is a freelance writer.
