Playing with Truth

Playing with Truth
Renaldo Piniella and Jennifer Van Dyck in “The Lifespan of a Fact.” Production Photo courtesy of Sharon Playhouse

Saving the best for last, Sharon Playhouse in Sharon, Conn., is closing its first season under the new leadership of Artistic Director Carl Andress and Managing Director Rod Christensen with its most confident production. Electrically paced by Marcia Milgrom Dodge, the Tony-Award nominated director of Broadway's "Ragtime" revival, "The Lifespan of a Fact" by Jeremy Kareken, David Murrell and Gordon Farrell sizzles with tension. If you're going to be scrolling through a streaming service on Friday night, scouting for a series to grab your attention and keep you glued, head to Sharon's Olsen Theater. 

To lay the foreground, allow me a bit of personal color, in-line with spirit of the play's focus on writers injecting themselves in the story. There's an unintentionally hilarious line that opens the fairly forgettable 2010 romantic comedy "Letters To Juliet" that has nevertheless lodged in my brain since I first heard it. On a work call while strolling through sunny Central Park, a young Amanda Seyfried introduces herself by beaming, "I'm a fact checker [at The New Yorker], actually. It is a bit like being a detective." Has anyone ever expressed such a wide-eyed sentiment? Except that "The Lifespan of a Fact," a drama indeed about a magazine fact checker, really is a detective story, one that opens with a report on a dead body. A murder hasn't taken place, but a suicide. A young Nevada man, 16-year-old Levi Presley, has jumped to his death from the observation balcony of a Las Vegas tourist hotel, and a (reportedly) remarkable 15-page essay on this tragedy has landed on the desk of a prestige magazine, ready for print — it just needs a quick fact check. Easy right? 

The assignment is handed to Jim Fingal (Renaldo Piniella), an intern and recent Harvard graduate, by editor Emily Penrose (Jennifer Van Dyck), with both actors and characters playing out artificial performances that belie the depth of their conviction. Jim is a smarmy charmer, willing to brown nose his way to a paid position, while Emily preemptively basks in the publishing glory she views on the horizon. Played across two sets with only three actors, it's Jonathan Walker's excellently grounded turn as the gruff but deeply humane writer, John D'Agata, that turns the play into a more slippery and complicated creature. Bringing out the prickly fury that simmers beneath the initial facades of Piniella and Van Dyck's character work, Walker anchors the production as a man accused of burying a life in an effort to immortalize a death.

Like any good detective story, I have purposefully concealed a piece of important information, just in case you haven't put the pieces together. The play is an adaptation of a 2012 book co-authored by John D'Agata and Jim Fingal, who really did dispute over the questionable truths and literary licenses taken in an essay initially submitted to Harper's Magazine and later to The Believer about Levi Presley, a real teenage boy who scaled two fences on the 109th floor of the Stratosphere Tower and leaped to his death on a Saturday night in July 2002. Published in 2012, "The Lifespan of A Fact," the original essay by creative non-fiction essayist D'Agata, a writer the late David Foster Wallace described as possessing the candor of David Shields and the aesthetic weight of Annie Dillard, is printed alongside his combative conversations with Believer intern, Fingal. 

"Hi, John. I'm the intern who's been assigned to fact-check your article," their correspondence began, as it does in the play. "I was hoping you could clarify how you determined that there are thirty-four strip clubs in the city while the source you're using says thirty-one." But that's the thing about a detective story, isn't it? Pull one thread, and you never know what could unravel.

Latest News

Join us for


 

  

Keep ReadingShow less
Summer Nights of Canaan

Wednesday, July 16

Cobbler n’ Cream
5 to 7 p.m.
Freund’s Farm Market & Bakery | 324 Norfolk Rd.

Canaan Carnival
6 to 10 p.m.
Bunny McGuire Park

Keep ReadingShow less
When the guide gets it wrong

Rosa setigera is a native climbing rose whose simple flowers allow bees to easily collect pollen.

Dee Salomon

After moving to West Cornwall in 2012, we were given a thoughtful housewarming gift: the 1997 edition of “Dirr’s Hardy Trees and Shrubs.” We were told the encyclopedic volume was the definitive gardener’s reference guide — a fact I already knew, having purchased one several months earlier at the recommendation of a gardener I admire.

At the time, we were in the thick of winter invasive removal, and I enjoyed reading and dreaming about the trees and shrubs I could plant to fill in the bare spots where the bittersweet, barberry, multiflora rose and other invasive plants had been.Years later, I purchased the 2011 edition, updated and inclusive of plants for warm climates.

Keep ReadingShow less
A few highlights from Upstate Art Weekend 2025

Foxtrot Farm & Flowers’ historic barn space during UAW’s 2024 exhibition entitled “Unruly Edges.”

Brian Gersten

Art lovers, mark your calendars. The sixth edition of Upstate Art Weekend (UAW) returns July 17 to 21, with an exciting lineup of exhibitions and events celebrating the cultural vibrancy of the region. Spanning eight counties and over 130 venues, UAW invites residents and visitors alike to explore the Hudson Valley’s thriving creative communities.

Here’s a preview of four must-see exhibitions in the area:

Keep ReadingShow less