Paltrow wins praise in 'Proof'

LONDON: Oscar-winning actress Gwyneth Paltrow won praise for her first West End stage performance in the London production of Proof, David Auburn's Pulitzer Prize-winning play.

The 29-year-old actress "brings a hauntingly lost, 25-going-on-14 quality to the role," wrote Paul Taylor of The Independent, who didn't like the play.

"Though Paltrow makes an arresting impression," he wrote in a review published on Thursday, "the play patronizes the audience by running a mile from any real discussion of the eponymous discovery. ... Less than the sum of its derivative parts, it is Broadway's mistaken idea of a truly penetrating play."

The Daily Mail's Michael Coveney, however, called Proof a "riveting play about maths and madness in sandals, windcheaters and dungarees".

"Gwyneth plays a clear-skinned girl with a gentle, slow- burning passion and turns the play into a domestic drama of unusual wit and poignancy with the maths (or 'math' as they say, Stateside) as an extra," Coveney said. --AP