The Proof Is in the Play: Inside the Opening Night of One of Broadway’s Most-Anticipated Revivals

It’s a rare, warm September day in Chicago when Robert (Don Cheadle) remembers that it is his daughter’s birthday in David Auburn’s Proof. Taking a break from his work, the mathematics professor offers to take Catherine (Ayo Edebiri) out for a celebratory dinner. But that was before Robert got lost in his work and before his death, leaving an equally brilliant but restless Catherine to solve the problems her father left behind.

On an unusually hot April day in New York City, guests gathered at the Booth Theatre for the opening night of Proof, the revival of the hit Tony- and Pulitzer Prize–winning play.

Starring Cheadle, Edebiri, Jin Ha, and Kara Young, the show (which was also adapted into a 2005 film with Gwyneth Paltrow, Anthony Hopkins, and Jake Gyllenhaal) follows Catherine as she grapples with the complexities of life and legacy upon discovering a revelatory proof after her brilliant but troubled father’s death.

Catherine and Robert’s relationship is complicated, but forming a natural family dynamic with the cast was easy for Cheadle.

“Being able to be on stage with all of these guys… we feel very fortunate to have this tight group to play with. We get to explore every night and try to figure out something new. And that’s really fun,” the House of Lies actor, who made his Broadway debut alongside Edebiri, told Vogue on the red carpet ahead of the show’s opening. “This play has a lot to offer in terms of legacy and family, mental health and depression, and truth versus fiction—and just the intrigue of all of those big themes. So whatever people take away from this, they take away.”

But the key to taking on an award-winning early-aughts revival? Making it your own.

“It has the feeling of working on a new play,” Edebiri, wearing a colorful, ruched Chanel midi dress, told Vogue. “It doesn’t feel like we’re doing a revival because we are interested in investigating things as if we’re the first people who have ever done this. I think everybody entered this with such an air of humility and investigation. So I just hope that I can continue to foster that spirit in myself and in future projects.”

For Ha, working on the revival has been a theater kid’s dream. “I had studied scenes from this play in school and scene study classes,” he recalled. “I never thought that I would have the opportunity to do a full production of it, let alone the revival on Broadway.”

The actor went on to discuss the significance of the revival’s diverse casting. “[The show] was originally written for white characters, and that’s the iteration I had seen growing up, but here we are, telling the same story—but also such a different story with the nuances that the casting creates. I couldn’t have hoped for a better version to be a part of it.”

Ha then took a minute to show off his look, created for him by Cats: The Jellicle Ball costume designer Qween Jean. The pale blue three-piece suit was adorned with a drop crystal fringe jacket and featured a mathematical equation waistcoat, topped off with a brooch depicting the famed woman-doing-math meme. (“I wanted her here tonight,” Ha said affectionately.)