(Edited highlights of the panel's review)

Watch the whole programme - 17 May 2002

MARK LAWSON:
Allison Pearson, the production has glamour and publicity, but does it have anything else?

ALLISON PEARSON:
I think it was wonderful. It was a subtle and complex play about the fragility of identity. A lot of people are talking about it being maths.

The play is about Catherine, Gwyneth Paltrow's character, she has been looking after her dad, who has had mental illness for many years. She has lost her identity.

We see her moving through the play to discover if she has an independent, separate life from him, and it's very painful. In the opening scenes, she is like his ghost, we meet his ghost but she is also the ghost of him.

I think it is an extraordinary performance by her, beautifully calibrated shifts in mood. We see her at the beginning, she is frightened and she's frightening, she is defended and defensive.

We gradually see her shifting, melting, until we have a scene where she has made love with a young maths researcher who comes to see her.

She smiles for the first time in the evening, and it's like the sun came on. It's not just about a Hollywood star, it's a fantastic production, four tremendous performances. You forget she is Gwyneth Paltrow in two minutes.

MARK LAWSON:
Tom Paulin, as Allison says, although they are all mathematicians it's about another science, genetics, can you inherit genius or will you inherit madness? Did it work for you?

TOM PAULIN:
It did work for me. The genius comes from the mother, I believe, as Allison pointed out to me! I was concerned about the actual script, which I think is a very superior sitcom. It's a version of 'A Beautiful Mind.' I doubt the writing.

But watching Gwyneth Paltrow, I thought this is wonderful, what a genius she is. It was like being in a small room with a wired -up graduate student. I've never had that. It was absolutely extraordinary, she is a genius.

I kept thinking, I've not got words to describe how she will, y'know, start twitching her leg as she talked.

MARK LAWSON:
That is high praise, so what is the genius then?

TOM PAULIN:
It's just the way she moves, her animation, the despair in her, the relationship with her father, which doesn't quite work because there is no reference to the mother.

I began to feel this was a male fantasy about having a close relationship with a daughter. It's absolutely brilliant watching her, she is extraordinary.

MARK LAWSON:
Something in the way she moves. Tim Lott?

TIM LOTT:
Tom has clearly fallen in love with her.

TOM PAULIN:
Not at all!

TIM LOTT:
I think she is a wonderful actress, one of the marks of that is the fact that as Allison said, I just didn't think of her as Gwyneth Paltrow. So many actors at that level would dominate the play just by their presence. That would be a bad thing. She is anonymous in this.

TOM PAULIN:
She doesn't do that.

TIM LOTT:
I agree completely. Forgetting about her for a moment, the play itself�I picked up the programme, probably the most thought provoking thing about the play in a way is the programme. That is challenging. I mean that in a good way.

I looked programme and thought, "Oh my God, I'm going to sit here and I'm going to be sort of tortured by these mathematical problems, I'm gonna have to be forced to pretend I understand at the end of it".

Actually, the maths plays a very small part in it. It's an extra in the play, and I'm very relieved by that. It's a play about faith, proof versus faith, about how much you can trust somebody. It's about trust more than anything else to me.

There is a moment when her sister, Claire, doesn't trust her, she doesn't trust her father.

ALLISON PEARSON:
The sister is a fantastic control freak.

TIM LOTT:
She is a brilliant character, Claire.

MARK LAWSON:
Isn't it a weakness that he does skip the maths? He used 'Proof' as a pun, as Tim says.

ALLISON PEARSON:
I noticed a lot of critics have said that. I really don't think it's true. A lot of playwrights flatter the audience by saying "I'm going to show you the maths." Nobody in that audience of that play could begin to understand any of the maths they are referring to.

TOM PAULIN:
But Michael Frayn does it with physics in 'Copenhagen'.

ALLISON PEARSON:
Yes, but not to that great an extent. I don't see why it should be neatly tied up. This is not what the play is about. The proof is about whether she can establish a separate existence from her father.

TIM LOTT:
It's about the proof of love.

MARK LAWSON:
The play is about people going to see Gwyneth Paltrow. We have Madonna turning up next week. Do we buy this line that these actresses think that the ultimate acting is stage acting?

ALLISON PEARSON:
I don't think that is true.

MARK LAWSON:
That is why they are there.

ALLISON PEARSON:
No, I don't think that is true at all. Gwyneth Paltrow, I saw her in a film, the Dorothy Parker film, and she had a tiny part. Her technical excellence was extraordinary. She wants to extend her range.

There is this snobbery about Hollywood stars coming over. Hollywood stars now are very, very different. It's like Elizabeth Taylor coming over on castors, being pushed on in a fur coat, kind of growling and going off.

The young stars, the Nicole Kidmans and the Gwyneth Paltrows, these people can really hold their own on the stage.

TOM PAULIN:
Absolutely.