Based on a true story. How many times does this classic line come up about a song, a book, a movie?! And you just know that there are just so many embellishments. So much tidying of the edges.
How can one tell what is really true? Where does the truth lie and imagination take over?
Endless questions…conundrums.
This is the territory that THE LIFESPAN OF A FACT explores. A world like Noel Harrison’s classic song, ‘Windmills Of Your Mind’.
“Like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheelNever ending or beginning on an ever spinning reelAs the images unwind, like the circles that you findIn the windmills of your mind!”
The scenario, just a tad ironical, is loosely based on real events. Emily Penrose is a New York magazine editor. She has received a new essay by John D’Agata one of America’s leading writers. It is about 16 year old boy who had committed suicide in Las Vegas by jumping off a hotel balcony. Youth suicide in Vegas had become endemic and D’Agata explores this in his essay.
Certain factual errors have been pointed out to Penrose and she decides to employ a young intern Jim to fact check the essay.
Jim finds so many errors in the essay that Penrose gives him John’s phone number so that he can run through them with him.
Jim however goes one step further and turns up at John’s apartment. Things spiral from there.
The current production at Roslyn Packer was originally conceived by Anne Louise Sarks who passed the baton on to Paige Rattray when she became the new Artistic Director of the Melbourne Theatre Company.
Rattray’s first class design team create the world of the play for the actors to weave their magic in – set designer Mar Horwell, costumes Emma White, lighting Paul Jackson and AV design Susie Henderson.
Rattray wins outstanding performances by her cast; Sigfrid Thornton in her STC debut as Emily Penrose, Charles Wu as intern/fact checker Jim Fingal and Gareth Davies as John D’Agata.
There is a fourth performer, musician Maria Alfonsine, who shadows the action, shifting within the space, playing her elegiac clarinet.
As we leave the theatre we are left to ponder; what do we look for in an essay, in literature? My theory. Literature looks for emotional truths, and if and when they are found, have a much longer lifespan.
THE LIFESPAN OF A FACT, written by Jeremy Karaken, David Murrell and Gordon Farrell, is playing the Roslyn Packer Theatre until 15 October 2022.
http://www.sydneytheatre.com.au
Sigfrid Thornton as Emily Penrose. Production photography by Prudence Upton
