Family ties, fears add up in ‘Proof’

David Auburn’s Tony- and Pulitzer-winning drama, “Proof,” is an intimate play set within a Big Idea framework of gender bias, feminism and stratospheric notions of mathematical genius.

Thoughtful, leavened with humor, it is about a young woman who may have inherited her late father’s mental instability as well as his brilliance, and about the uncertain authorship of a revolutionary new mathematical proof.

East West Players’ accessible new staging, directed by Heidi Helen Davis, plays up the intimacy, placing the resonance of familial and personal tragedy at the forefront. Its effectiveness is due in large part to Kimiko Gelman’s compelling performance in the lead.

Gelman plays Catherine, a renowned mathematician’s daughter who put her life and the development of her own mathemati- cal gifts on hold for years in order to care for her father in his Chicago home during his mental decline.

His recent death has left her depressed, intermittently delusional and fearful that her mind, too, is failing.

Her suspicions and fears are further aroused when Hal (David J. Lee), her father’s worshipful former student, begins sorting through the genius’ notebooks in hopes of finding mathematical gold among pages of gibberish. The fact that Hal assumes Catherine isn’t qualified to do the sorting increases her angst, even as their mutual attraction builds.

She is thrown into further turmoil by the arrival of her elegant, estranged older sister, Claire (Joanne Takahashi), who paid their father’s bills but knows that Catherine has paid the higher price. Guilt-driven, Claire wants her sister to fly back to New York with her, and it gradually becomes clear that an institution is likely to be on the itinerary.

The breaking point comes with Catherine’s revelation of the existence of a 40-page, mathematical proof, apparently in her father’s writing.

Is it a once-great man’s redemptive legacy, a young woman’s blinding triumph or a manifestation of her own illness?

Gelman has a difficult task. She must make sullen, hostile Catherine sympathetic to the audience. A vivid physical presence, she does this with febrile intensity and quenched stillnesses that make all the more moving Catherine’s bursts of radiance during moments of hope and remembered happiness.

Dom Magwili as Robert, the late mad genius who is seen first as a rather prosaic hallucination after his death and then in flashbacks, humanizes the role with warmth and quirky humor even as Robert descends into madness. Magwili doesn’t rave and rant; when Robert has a flash of awareness that his illness has returned, Magwili makes his devastation felt in a silent, physical display of anguish more shattering than any emotional outburst could be.

Lee and Takahashi offer capable, though less layered, performances. Takahashi lets Claire’s elegant mask slip only superficially, while it’s difficult to read in Lee’s appealing, puppyish amiability any suggested ulterior motives in Hal’s desire to get close to Catherine. That likability also dilutes the effectiveness of Hal’s sudden display of rampant intellectual chauvinism and his subsequent apparent conversion.

Effective design elements, including Bob Bresnik’s precise sound and Dori Quan’s chic and casual costumes, complement the personal, lived-in quality of this production (although a rabidly barking dog, unseen, gets a tad old).

Set designer Victoria Petrovich gives dilapidated authenticity to the family’s house, where all the action takes place; its porch, littered with magazines, stacks of books, empty cups and trash, is a testament to the dysfunction that overtook both father and daughter. Lighting designer Jose Lopez, meanwhile, adds visual resonance with a wash of pale autumn light and the nighttime loneliness of a single porch light and a solitary glow behind lace curtains.

*

‘Proof’

Where: David Henry Hwang Theater, 120 N. Judge John Aiso St., L.A.

When: 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, 2 p.m. Saturdays-Sundays

Ends: Feb. 27

Price: $33-$38

Contact: (213) 625-7000; www.eastwestplayers.org

Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes