Proof

David Auburn’s Proof concerns math and mathematicians, but is better described as a play about the complexities of passion and unfathomable intelligence. Here, math may stand in for any pursuit that's demanding and precise and beautifully rewarding for those who pursue it enough. The play is also, in no small part, about human interaction, obligation, ownership, and mental illness. Director Suzi Regan helms a production well worthy of this dense, masterfully efficient script in a hard-hitting two hours at Tipping Point Theatre.

Fittingly, the story begins with guarded Catherine (Kate Peckham) and her father, storied math legend and University of Chicago professor Robert (Hugh Maguire), gingerly talking about the trappings of sanity. The conversation heaps on layers of context when the characters quickly reveal that Robert has recently died, having grappled with career-ending insanity for years under Catherine’s watchful care; the questions this interaction raises about her own mental state are not lost on either of them. Also within Catherine’s orbit are the alive and present Hal (Chris Korte), a young member of the math faculty warily permitted to scour Robert’s notebooks, and Claire (Kelly Komlen), her take-charge, put-together sister who swoops in from New York to remove Catherine from the dilapidated house of their childhood. The first act progresses in a linear fashion, before and then after the funeral, exposition spread thick in this slice-of-life approach that begins to twine the three living characters’ lives together. It’s all building toward a reveal changes the game entirely with one jaw-dropping utterance.

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'Til Death Do Us Part: Late Nite Catechism 3

The Late Nite Catechism series is a nineteen-year-old Chicago-born institution that has been adamantly adopted nationwide. Not only has the show employed and cultivated a formidable bullpen of actor/improvisers to bring Sister to the masses, but many Sisters can perform more than one of its several editions at will. To wit, fresh off her run in Sister's Christmas Catechism at the Century Theatre, Mary Zentmyer has taken up residence at the adjacent Gem Theatre for a romantically themed lesson in Maripat Donovan's 'Til Death Do Us Part: Late Nite Catechism 3. That's some parlor trick, and the current production makes for a welcome extension of Zentmyer's stay in Detroit.

Ingeniously, this Sister manages to feel authentic without buying into the trope that nuns are comic by virtue of being humorless. The character is indeed strict, whipping out hankies to force modesty on female audience members and deftly coaching the audience to respond in unison with the proper obedience due a schoolteacher. Yet Zentmyer also delights in her work, getting a kick out of her own corny jokes and reacting generously when something funny occurs. Clearly an old hand at the scripted beats of the show, she's comfortable indulging in some small tangents, and viewers who watch closely may glimpse the split-second thought process in which she invents razor-sharp zingers about the strangest audience responses.

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Little Women

On the book-to-musical front, Little Women (book, Allan Knee; lyrics, Mindi Dickstein; music, Jason Howland) is an excellent candidate. With its epic scope, archetypal characters with heart, and place of honor in the children's literature canon, the Louisa May Alcott novel lends itself well to the conventions of musical theater. Now at the Encore Musical Theatre, as directed by Steve DeBruyne, is a production every bit as fulfilling and heartrending as its source.

The play is relatively faithful to the book, preserving cherished moments but taking some liberties with how and where they occur in order to streamline the plot. (Condensing a book of hundreds of pages into a two-and-three-quarter-hour production requires some sacrifices, and most of the adapters' choices are justifiable rather than frustrating.) Here is the ordinary yet magical Massachusetts upbringing of the four March girls: proper Meg (Thalia Schramm), tomboy Jo (Katie Hardy), saintly Beth (Cara AnnMarie), and petulant Amy (Madison Deadman). With their father away serving in the Civil War, the teenage girls are watched over by mother Marmee (Sonia Marquis), a morally steadfast woman who seems incapable of making a parenting mistake. These five performers have cultivated such a fond family dynamic, it's a pleasure to watch Deadman resent being put in her place, Schramm fall hard and fast in love, AnnMarie demurely resisting expectations of her life, and Marquis privately admitting to feelings of self-doubt. But the play's center ultimately lies where it should, with Jo, and Hardy's exuberant take on the ambitious, unconventional young writer with sky-high aspirations makes the story soar. This Jo is relatable and engaging even when she's being bull-headed or obtuse, and her songs reflect the conviction and energy that propels the character.

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La Ronde

Despite the 1900 Vienna setting of Arthur Schnitzler’s century-old La Ronde, the play’s sexually frank subject matter easily connects with a contemporary audience. Infidelity, assault, one-night stands, manipulation, prostitution — stripped of nearly all other context, the human race was and is fairly teeming with dirty, dirty sex fiends. The strength of the production at the Abreact, directed by Frannie Shepherd-Bates, is in revealing the risqué to be uncannily familiar: as a group, Schnitzler’s characters form a ring of unconscionable deviants, but dissected into individual components, the human mating dance appears universally bumbling, practically mundane, and likely reminiscent of a viewer’s own travails.

The two-act play contains an even ten scenes and features a total of ten characters, ranging from gentry to starving artists. Put bluntly, what binds together these representatives of different classes and occupations is their genitals, and what they want to do with them. Each scene features two opposite-sex actors, one of whom spins off into the next two-person scene: imagine a lascivious game of “The Farmer in the Dell.” Lest I make it sound too gimmicky, Schnitzler’s masterful structure — in one fell swoop — provides commentary about the role of class and power in sex, gives each character dimension by use of often-contrasting scenarios, and wordlessly predates every health class lecture on the spread of sexually transmitted disease. Scenes take place in various public and private locales; designer Alan Batkiewicz’s pieced-together set elements and tattered backdrop evoke a seedy Victorian underworld, as well as a more thematic take with respect to airing dirty laundry, of which this show has plenty.

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The Misanthrope

Molière’s The Misanthrope is a vicious comedy on every front. The superior title character shoots from the hip, letting fly with his every scathing criticism; even among the “polite” members of society, gossip and back-biting abounds. Yet the blithely two-faced practices of seventeenth-century French aristocracy are well tolerated by its practitioners: in a world where as many as four men can pursue the same woman simultaneously — in the same room, even — without batting an eye, certain social niceties do seem to be useful. In the Hilberry Theatre’s current production of the Timothy Mooney translation, directed by Jesse Merz, whether unflinching honesty or perpetual facetiousness is the better tactic is not definitively answered, but it’s quite obvious which side has more fun.

The misanthrope is Alceste, played here by Andrew Papa as a brilliant but sour boil on the derriere of his social circle. He’s a special breed of imperious boor who offends people so thoroughly, they sue him for the injury, as prompted by a delightful scene with foppish supplicant Oronte (Alan Ball). In fact, Alceste might willingly withdraw from humankind altogether, were it not for his inconvenient adoration of the coquettish, popular Célimène (Vanessa Sawson), who strings him along as readily as she does her numerous other suitors. The discourse among these players and their contemporaries is so artificial, they’re able to converse frankly about the role disingenuousness serves in social convention; it appears to be among their favorite pastimes after complimenting each other disingenuously. In contrast to the practiced airs and flourishes of the others, Papa’s Alceste sulks and frowns, sometimes enjoying lording his opinion over others, but more frequently miserable.

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