Ayo Edebiri and Don Cheadle will make their Broadway debuts next spring as a father and daughter united by math as well as mental health struggles in a revival of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play “Proof.”
The play, by David Auburn, previously ran on Broadway from October 2000 to January 2003 — an unusually long run for a serious drama. In 2001 it won not only the Pulitzer but also the Tony Award for best play.
Set in Chicago, “Proof” is about a young woman whose father, a well-known mathematician, has died; she is juggling complex relationships with her sister and with one of her father’s former students. And those relationships are upended by the discovery of a mathematical proof of uncertain authorship in her father’s office. Reviewing an Off Broadway production in 2000, the critic Bruce Weber, writing in The New York Times, deemed it “an exhilarating and assured new play” and said that it “turns the esoteric world of higher mathematics literally into a back porch drama, one that is as accessible and compelling as a detective story.”
The play has been widely staged, and in 2005 was adapted for film.
Edebiri is an Emmy Award winner for her role in the FX series “The Bear.” Cheadle was nominated for an Academy Award for his work in the 2004 film “Hotel Rwanda.”
The “Proof” revival will be directed by Thomas Kail, who won a Tony Award for directing “Hamilton.” It is scheduled to begin previews March 31 and to open April 16 at an unspecified Shubert theater.
Mike Bosner (“Beautiful” and “Shucked”) and Kail are the revival’s lead producers.
Michael Paulson is the theater reporter for The Times.
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