The Lifespan of a Fact
- May 26, 2020
- 2 min read
★★★★☆
My brother is the marketing director of the Unicorn Theatre. For the past several seasons, their creative has been handled by a local agency who, in the midst of the Coronavirus crisis, said they were barely hanging on and would have to pass on the upcoming season. My brother asked me if I was interested, and I said I was—this is a dream assignment that’s been on my wishlist for years. Of course, as part of the process, I have to read the plays, and so I have been. I love going to the theatre but I’ve never read a lot of plays (not unusual, I’m sure), so this has been a relatively novel experience for me. In any case, at the conclusion of reading each play, I’ve dashed off initial impressions via text to my brother. For these plays, unlike my more measured, more thoughtful book reviews, I’ll be using those slapdash messages.
The Lifespan of a Fact—Good, and yet, not as good as I’d hoped it would be. The premise is tantalizing—What is truth? What is fact?—and the dialog delivers, but the characters seemed too everyman somehow … the grizzled old-school writer who doesn’t give a damn about facts, the wide-eyed intern taking his fact-checking assignment to the literal extreme, the aging editor-in-chief willing to do just about anything to finally get some goddamn respect. I suppose, then, that it’s up to the actors to make the characters more than the sum of their parts, and, when done, I can see some real fireworks happening on stage. This one could be lots of fun.
To which my brother replied, “Totally. It definitely has that “Broadway shine” to the script. I wish I could have seen the show with Cherry Jones, Bobbie Cannavale, and Daniel Radcliffe.”
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