Studio 16 to May 12, 2024
Tickets from $25-$45 at www.kindredtheatre.org
Posted May 3, 2024
Is truth negotiable? That’s the question posed by The Lifespan of a FACT written by Jeremy Karaken, David Murrell and Gordon Farrell based on the non-fiction book of the same name by John D’Agata and Jim Fingal whose real-life debate the book and the play explores.
In the play, just days before a New York literary magazine goes to press, Jim Fingal, newly graduated from Harvard, is hired by the editor of the magazine to fact-check a piece written by well-respected writer John D’Agata. Commissioned by the magazine to write about the Las Vegas suicide of sixteen-year-old Levi Presley, John has submitted a fifteen page “essay” (John refuses to use the word ‘article’) but, in very short order, Jim has accumulated a hundred and thirty pages of disputed facts. Frustrated and working against the clock, Jim flies from New York to Vegas, knocks on John’s door and collapses on his couch.
John explains away the discrepancies Jim has so conscientiously uncovered: “I’m an essayist not a journalist”, suggesting he is not bound by the same rules. Does it matter whether the bricks of the building from which young Presley threw himself were red, according to John, or brown, as observed by Jim? How long did it take the boy to fall? Eight seconds or nine? Do the details matter? The truth is, a teenaged boy, not finding life worth living, threw himself off a building to his death.
But Jim’s job is to check the facts and he is going to check every last one of them.
Jim’s zest for accuracy could be tedious but it’s not. The arguments are prickly, the dialogue snappy and the pace is lively.
The playwrights don’t come down on either side. It’s easy to dismiss nerdy, over-eager Jim and yet he has a point: do we want and expect truth or will truthiness suffice? (“Truthiness”, according the Merriam-Webster is, “the quality of seeming to be true but not necessarily or actually true according to known facts”). John argues his essay is about “essence”. But shouldn’t he get his facts straight? Some of those facts seem immaterial but who’s to say? There was another suicide that same day in Las Vegas which John claimed in the essay was by hanging. It was not; it was another jumper. Material? To that suicide’s parents, obviously yes.
Astutely directed by Jennifer Clement, The Lifespan of a FACT prompts us to ask ourselves when does truth matter? How much latitude do we allow?
Meaty stuff. And yet very funny as these two wrestle over the details.
Tal Shulman, as Jim, is simply wired. Obsessively keen but also eager to please, Shulman’s Jim walks the line between being sweetly nerdy to being downright insulting: “I will fuck your shit up”, he tells John. Adding to the complexity of the relationship, Jim comes from affluence and entitlement while John comes from working class America.
Ben Immanuel, as John, is more laid back, almost mellow but somewhat arrogant – who is Jim Fingal after all? But eventually Immanuel’s John leads us down a dark, sad road. A boy died. John really cared. He had spoken to Levi Presley’s distraught parents. Does it matter how tall the building was or how many cars were involved in the ensuing traffic jam? We are emotionally drawn to John but the facts are the facts and he has played fast and loose with them.
Loretta Walsh is the editor Emily Penrose, probably the least sympathetic character in the play. The magazine Emily edits is failing, her career is on the line and the deadline for publication is hours away. And so while John and Jim are talking about the relevance of truth, Emily’s concerns are more self-serving. Walsh does what she can; she’s brittle and aggressive as Emily tries to wrangle John and Jim into a compromise but I didn’t care much that Emily’s career might be on the line.
Peter Wilds offers a clean, minimalist set with multi platforms representing both Emily’s office and John’s apartment. Emily Trepanier bathes the set in light and provides, initially, projections of text. It looks great.
I liked this play a lot and this production, presented by Kindred Theatre, does terrific work with the material. With the Trump trial labouring on and on and on, truth itself seems to be on trial. Will truthiness be enough or do voters south of the border want and deserve more? And don’t we, as Canadians going to the polls, deserve truth, real truth, from our politicians, too?