Proof is a highly-intelligent play in the tradition of Arcadia and Copenhagen. Writer David Auburn uses math as a foundation for a story about gender expectations, madness and love.
While Michael Freyn in Copenhagen uses the detective form to explore the Uncertainty Principle in personal relationships, Auburn uses the detective form to explore proof of identity and trust.
The structure gives us a first act that sets up a crime, and yet no crime seems to have been committed. The second act solves the crime that may not have been a crime at all.
See or read this play for techniques in bending a genre, in this case, the infinitely-malleable detective story.
