David Auburn's Proof is built on relationships: a damaged girl and her broken father; the sibling rivalry of two sisters on very different paths; the uncertainty of young love. Each tie between two characters helps illuminate another.

Nominally, the play is about brilliance and madness in mathematics, but even that is another of the many relationships that bind together a topic - mathematical discovery - that would ordinarily be a bit dry for theater.

It is the execution of these relationships that drives the performance at Tacoma Little Theatre.

There is a love story carving its way through Proof, punctuated by waves of unadulterated awkwardness. In another show, an actor might dread these pauses and moments of confusion, but here they are the heart of the budding romance between Danelle Jaeger's Catherine and Mason Quinn's Hal. After all, these are a pair of twentysomething mathematicians thrown together by death. You weren't expecting slick lines and casual confidence, were you? The truth of most love stories, nerds or not, is that nobody has any idea what they're doing. Too many fictions are short a few awkward pauses.

There is also the family story - two daughters of a passing icon, at opposite ends of his fractured inheritance. Claire, the driven sister, handles what remains of her father's mortal affairs - a house to sell, a sister to fetch, ever-practical, ever-grounded. Catherine, the brilliant and caring sister, also might be mad, and drifts through everything. The chemistry between these two is palpable, and a taste of bad blood and old resentments bubbles through their ups and downs. But there is love, too, in that odd sort of family way.

But as with the relationships it traces, the production of Proof is a fragile thing. The little parts that make a play can too easily break it, and there are few things more distracting on a stage (at least to me) than someone's head inexplicably in darkness.

Whether it's a problem with the lighting or the actors' blocking (I am leaning toward the former), everyone spends the bulk of the show weaving in and out of shadows, and not in a cleverly metaphorical way. I suppose it's a small complaint, in some ways, but I've never been an actor, nor a director, nor a designer of any kind, and I never will be any of these. What I have been is a lighting technician, and such troubles bug me endlessly. If your cast is tall, point the lights higher. If they won't go any higher, make the porch lower. If your characters wander every inch of the stage, then light every inch.

OK, my rant against mediocrity in technical fields is done. Proof is largely a good play, and one worth seeing. There are belly laughs and poignant moments, and things that make the audience say "Oh shit!" (a true story of one guy a few rows ahead of us, upon the closing of Act 1). There is good acting, and the joy of seeing a local theater put on a show written barely a decade ago.

There are problems, but they are overcome. Such is the way of community theater.

Proof

Through June 26, 7:30 p.m. Friday–Saturday
2 p.m. Sunday, $15–$24
Tacoma Little Theatre, 210 N. I St., Tacoma
253.272.2281