Holdren's Vulture review was evidently posted last night but I didn't find it when looking earlier today and only just came across it on the NYMag home page. Eloquently stated and a good read as always.
https://www.vulture.com/article/theater-review-proof-auburn-cheadle-edebiri.html
"If Proof can still sparkle and snap, Kail isn’t proving it. And despite their eminent likability, Ayo Edebiri and Don Cheadle — in the central roles of Catherine and her father, Robert — may even be the wrong actors.
I say “despite,” but the truth is that Edebiri and Cheadle both face a challenge here, one that Kail isn’t helping them to meet with full ferocity: As performers who naturally channel decency, they are not playing nice characters."
...
"Catherine is all defensive spikes, while Robert, both dead and alive, can be withering in his judgment. “Claire’s done well for herself,” he says, in a moment of flashback, about Catherine’s older sister (played by the national treasure Kara Young), a currency analyst in New York who keeps trying to lure Catherine back toward social normality. “I’m satisfied with her. I’m proud of you.” It’s a line that should be intimate and devastating at the same time, but in the overall warmth of Cheadle’s performance, you’d be forgiven for missing it. Surely he could adjust the temperature and focus of the role — and so could Edebiri, who defaults to the kind of outward, slightly floppy self-effacement and internal “I’m taken for granted” chagrin that worked so well for her as Sydney on The Bear. It’s a mode she’s very good at, but it’s not quite enough to juice up a whole play’s engine in the way that it has to here, and Kail isn’t pushing for more oomph. He’s letting both of Proof’s prickly protagonists get too cuddly, and so the tension slackens, air leaks from the seams, and the whole vessel starts to wobble and sink."
