By WOODY WEINGARTEN
If you want to guess how many facts, including fake ones, can dance humorously and philosophically on the head of a pin, scoot over to the 6th St. Playhouse in Santa Rosa.
There you’ll find Lifespan of a Fact, a cerebral 95-minute play that may test your patience for nit-picking and a sluggish first act but is sure to reward you with tons of snarky-based chuckles minutes later. The acting, meanwhile, morphs from wimpy and tough-to-hear into robust and boisterous.
Crisp dialogue. A little slapstick, including a character at war with his backpack. Farce-like slamming of doors. All are tossed in for good measure and laughs.
The basic plotline? It’s all about truth vs. lies.
John D’Agata, a Norman Mailer-type veteran writer played arrogantly and gruffly by Marty Pistone, has penned a career-best “legacy” essay about a teen suicide for a prestigious but fiscally challenged New York magazine.
Egocentric enough to list himself along the great essayists of all time, he’s taken more than a few liberties with the facts. A lifelong habit? Clearly.
Jim Fingal, an energetic young intern portrayed by Noah Vondralee-Sternhill, struts his Harvard grad cockiness once he gets into the work — after awkwardly beginning the bizarre series of fact checks. If not careful, his over-the-top corrections will diminish the essay by erasing its color.
D’Agata, always protective of his reputation, nastily chides him about overestimating his “importance in the entire process.”
John D’Agata (Marty Pistone) unsuccessfully tries to sweet-talk Emily Penrose (Shanay Howell). Photo by Eric Chazankin.
It takes no time at all for Emily Penrose, the editor who tasks Fingal, to recognize the pair’s polarized views (Shanay Howell alternates with Emily Lynn Cornelius, the troupe’s executive artistic director, in the role).
She listens to them swapping insults, attempts to mediate — and then, with resignation, asks them “not to kill each other” (the outcome of which remains in doubt for some time).
Though the dramedy’s director, Libby Oberlin, has a tsunami of words to deal with, she keeps Act II at a pace that sprints — zingy enough to cause the audience to applaud between scenes.
The play (written by Jeremy Kareken, David Murrell, and Gordon Farrell) is based on a 2012 book crafted by the real-life D’Agata and Fingal.
Lifespan of a Fact debuted on Broadway in 2018 starring Daniel Radcliffe, Bobby Cannavale, and Cherry Jones. Critics praised its cleverness.
And its timeliness.
When the play’s over, you might try thinking of someone out there today who might stretch the truth just a teeny bit to serve his own purposes?
Lifespan of a Fact will run at the Monroe Stage of the 6th St. Playhouse, 52 W. 6th St., Santa Rosa, through May 31. Tickets: $26.95 to $47.95. Info: 707-523-4185 or boxoffice@6thstreetplayhouse.com.
Sherwood “Woody” Weingarten, a longtime voting member of the San Francisco Bay Area Theater Critics Circle and the author of four books, can be contacted by email at voodee@sbcglobal.net or on his websites, https://woodyweingarten.com and https://vitalitypress.com.
