Don’t be deceived by the title.  The phrase “lifespan of a fact” sounds about as dry as the Mojave Desert and just a mite confusing.  But, as Glenview’s Oil Lamp Theater’s current stage production proves, those knee jerk perceptions turn out to be completely absurd.  Instead, its The Lifespan of a Fact is about as engrossing and entertaining as anything you’ll find on the big screen, a streaming service or another theatrical stage.

Adapted from a 2012 book of the same title, the play re-enacts the fiery real-life interplay between a writer and his fact checker about a magazine article concerning suicide in Las Vegas. A sixteen-year-old boy, Levi Presley, jumped from the Stratosphere Hotel in 2002. The author writing about his death, John D’Agata, used his piece to talk more broadly about the scourge of suicide and its prevalence in Vegas.  Jim Fingal was the fact checker assigned to him by the magazine publishing his essay.  Together, they would eventually co-author the book, The Lifespan of a Fact, revealing the laborious and harrowing process of ensuring the preservation of truth remains the cornerstone of journalistic practice. Derived from the book, Oil Lamp’s standout presentation of the play, which debuted in 2018, brings that process blazingly to life.

It starts innocently enough, slathered as it is in the hallmarks of high stakes corporate urgency. Magazine editor Emily Penrose (Marianne Embree) needs a fact checker for an article by a highly regarded writer known to take creative liberties with his submissions. She taps a young, eager and very bright recent Harvard grad, Jim Fingal (James Wheeler), for the job.  He’s got three days to make sure every detail is accurate and if they’re not, make sure they are by Monday. Fingal assures her he’s got this.  Not only does he carry the Harvard stamp, he reminds her he also worked on the college’s vaunted newspaper, The Crimson.  After reviewing his strategy with her, he’s flushes whatever plans he had for the weekend and plunges into his task.

Quickly noticing discrepancies in what the author stated and what was fact, he queries her about how best to address the conflict.  High ranking editors in New York’s media empires don’t usually have time for the tedium of minutiae and she recommends he call D’Agata himself for clarifications or corrections.  With that recommendation, she’s unwittingly introducing dynamite to a flame.

So driven is he to meet his commitment, Fingal hops a plane to Vegas, uninvited and uninstructed, to meet with the author. From moment one, Wheeler as Fingal fills his role so completely you have no reservations cheering his conviction, even if he is a bit top heavy in the sanctimonious and ego departments.  The first has a lot to do with who he’s dealing with.  He and D’Agata, splendidly played by Tim Walsh, have opposing views on the pliability of journalistic tenets.  D’Agata doesn’t even want to call the piece he submitted an article.  He prefers to reference it as an essay, something much more amenable to creative license.  As interested in the feel, texture and aesthetic resonance of his writing as he is in its truth, D’Agata believes some facts, or a portion of the core components of truth, can be sacrificed to the art of writing.  Neither the editor or the fact checker questions the beauty or power of the piece D’Agata has written about the young boy’s death, but they don’t want a compromised truth to be its cost. With two colossal egos at war, the clashes between the two men become titanic and, superficially, hugely comical.  Director Elizabeth Mazur Levin’s nimble sense of pacing keeps anticipation on a steady boil and the scrappy, often scintillating dialog, bullet train fast.   Jeremy Kareken, David Murrell and Gordon Farrell adapted the book for the stage and deserve extravagant praise for how effectively they make the would-be arcane so deliciously palatable.  

Although the play’s beginning transpires in the blank sterility of a New York office building, the bulk of it happens in D’Agata’s Las Vegas home.  There, Ellen Markus’s scenic design gives a sobering view of what life as an acclaimed and respected feature writer might look like.  It’s not an enviable or tempting picture.  Rather it’s quite modest and absent of anything that suggests indulgence or noticeable luxury.  D’Agata informs the fact checker that he lived there with his mother until she passed away and confirmed he also teaches at a local university in Las Vegas.  It’s the type of solitary existence that fosters contemplation.  And it also seems to be an environment where convictions easily harden. 

In a desperate attempt to salvage a written work she hopes will be a part of her legacy at the magazine, the editor, Penrose, eventually ends up in Vegas, too.  As the three pick the article/essay apart, evaluating the import, significance and intrinsic criticality of each factual element, you sense the gravity of what they’re attempting to do.  As much as Fingal the fact checker abhors it, they’re “negotiating” on what and how information will be relayed in D’Agata’s story.  How truth, as they collectively agree to define it, will be expressed.   The process is quiet, reasoned and as gripping as watching the deliberations of a “trial of the century” live and in-person. 

It would be terrific if seeing the play does what the artistic team behind the production would like it to do, generate conversation about the relationship between truth, facts and storytelling.  But if it doesn’t, The Lifespan of a Fact will make you think about all those things more intently, more actively and, in essence, leave you a changed person.  The acting, directing and production value just happen to push the entertainment quotient sky high. 

The Lifespan of a Fact

Through April 13, 2025

Oil Lamp Theater

1723 Glenview Road

Glenview, IL  60025

https://www.oillamptheater.org/mainstage-productions/the-lifespan-of-a-fact

*This review is also featured on https://www.chicago-theater.com/!