Is truth subjective? Do facts get in the way of truth? What is truth, and who decides?
Welcome to "The Lifespan of a Fact," a play by Jeremy Kareken, David Murrell and Gordon Farrell -- and to the return of Wilmington theater troupe Big Dawg Productions, putting on its first live stage performances since March 2020.
"The Lifespan of a Fact," a witty and engaging dramatic comedy, runs through Sunday in the studio theater of Thalian Hall downtown. The space is where Big Dawg got its start a quarter of a century ago before moving to the Cape Fear Playhouse on Castle Street, which the company had to vacate recently due to the financial pressures of the pandemic.
At any rate, the play comes from the book by acclaimed essayist John D'Agata and the man charged with fact-checking one of his pieces, Jim Fingal. Like the essay, the book is non-fiction, and the book and the play deal with an argument about the nature of truth that played out over six years.
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Lest you think an evening spent with such weighty questions leads to an epistemological quagmire, rest assured that "The Lifespan of a Fact" is a comedy of sorts. In fact, with guidance from director Steve Vernon, the dialogue cracks its wit on us at the speed of funny.
A trio of actors delivers this ponderous funny business: Randy Davis (D'Agata) and Matt Carter (Fingal), with Eleanor Stafford as Emily Primrose, a magazine editor. She sets the action of the play in motion.
Stafford is utterly convincing as the hapless Emily, who needs D'Agata's essay for her struggling magazine. But she doesn't expect that a simple fact check of her writer's essay is about to boil over into a confrontation over its accuracy.
One can't help feeling compassion for Carter's Fingal. His enthusiasm and ambition are thrown into the grinding maw of D'Agata's ego-driven, albeit sincere quest for a story about teen suicide in Las Vegas, in which the writer alters facts surrounding the event to create something more like a mood.
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Carter hits all the notes in Fingal's counterpoint to D'Agata's musical approach. Davis, as the author, takes us on a journey from the sardonic professor, eager to put his fact-checker in his place, to someone who cares deeply about the way this story is told — more literature than journalism.
Donna Troy's set and Jeff Loy's lighting are beautifully integrated into this production. The lighting has a musical quality, accompanying the rhythmic and harmonic changes in the dialog, and the set's functionality takes us smoothly from a magazine office somewhere in New York to a modest home in Las Vegas.
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There is no attempt within the play to answer the questions posed at the top of this review. You're free to consider them for yourself and discuss on the drive home. So, we're left with this:
Fact: Big Dawg has a play at Thalian Hall this weekend.
Truth: You'll probably enjoy every minute of it.
Contact StarNews arts and entertainment at 910-343-2343.
Want to go?
What: "The Lifespan of a Fact" by Jeremy Kareken, David Murrell and Gordon Farrell. Based on the book by John D’Agata and Jim Fingal. Presented by Big Dawg Productions.
When: 8 p.m. June 17-19 and 3 p.m. June 20
Where: Thalian Hall's Ruth and Bucky Stein Studio Theatre, 310 Chestnut St., Wilmington
Details: $25; $22 for seniors, students and military.
Info: 910-632-2285 or ThalianHall.org.
The Link LonkJune 15, 2021 at 05:06PM
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Fun 'Fact': Wilmington troupe's post-pandemic debut leavens fact/truth debate with humor - StarNewsOnline.com
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Funny
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