Goosebumps. That’s what you’ll get after watching Desert Ensemble Theatre’s production of The Lifespan of a Fact at the Palm Springs Cultural Center.
Much of the credit for these goosebumps goes to the play’s director, David Youse, a veteran director and actor who serves as the executive director of the Palm Springs Young Playwrights Festival. Here, he’s turned out a show that is unrelenting in its pace, natural in its blocking, and merciless in its tension. He’s also surely responsible for getting the wonderful Chuck Yates back on a local stage; they worked together at the late, lamented Coyote Stageworks, where Yates was the founding artistic director, and Youse was the board president, before the pandemic shut down the company.
But we’re getting ahead ourselves here. The Lifespan of a Fact is a play written by Jeremy Kareken, David Murrell and Gordon Farrell, based on the book written by John D’Agata and Jim Fingal. John D’Agata and Jim Fingal also happen to be the names of the two men in the cast; they wrote the book about their experience creating an “essay” for a magazine. (Remember that word, essay. It is important to the show.)
We see Emily Penrose, played by Christine Tringali Nunes, busily at work, typing an email on a computer. We see that email above the set on a big screen that echoes her words as she produces them. It is a great bit of theater and is used whenever anyone sends a computer message. It is a Wednesday at her magazine, and she is totally focused on her job.
She is interrupted by Jim Fingal, played by John Corr; he’s there for a job interview. He’s applied to be a fact-checker—something most large magazines had in the days of yore. Emily hires Jim to fact-check a piece written by John D’Agata, played by Yates. The aging writer’s topic is the suicide of a young man in Las Vegas. If you think there wouldn’t be too much to fact-check there, you’d be wrong; in fact, Jim goes to work trying to verify a dozen facts he finds in the first two sentences.
Eventually, Jim has to phone John to get a clarification about, of all things, the number of strip clubs in Las Vegas. You’d think John would give Jim a straight answer—but the fact-checker finds that getting any sensible answer out of this writer is not as easy as he thought it would be. And the article’s deadline is approaching.
Sunday morning comes, and we find Jim asleep on John’s sofa in Las Vegas. Emily is flying in to try to speed things along, as their deadline is Monday morning, and almost nothing has been accomplished. As much as I would love to, I can’t reveal more about the plot without spoilers—but I can say that deadline plays a big part in creating the tension that runs throughout the play.
This is a breathtaking story that poses heavy questions. It asks: Are facts negotiable? Is “accuracy” the same as “truth,” especially in this time of the internet and social media?
Thankfully, the play also offers some lovely laughs; they give us some breathing room while we try to deal with such heavy thoughts as journalistic integrity, the importance of trust … and even suicide.
I don’t think I have ever seen three actors so completely in character; each of them is ideally cast and has clearly studied their role in depth. The problems they each face make the intensity of the play grow as they—along with those of us in the audience—face the ways in which our world is changing.
What a triumph! Producers Shawn Abramowitz, DET’s executive director, and Jerome Elliott Moskowitz, the artistic director, were still shimmering with excitement about the success of their opening, which was sold out! We know the reputations of the cast and the director helped that, but even then, this is a spine-tingler.
This is an amazing play that will leave you with a lot to think about. It may change the way in which you view the media; at the least, it’s 85 highly entertaining minutes about other people’s problems. Either way, you will not soon forget DET’s production of The Lifespan of a Fact … or those goosebumps.
Desert Ensemble Theatre’s production of The Lifespan of a Fact will be performed at 7:30 p.m., Friday and Saturday; and 2 p.m., Saturday and Sunday, through Sunday, Feb. 4, at the Palm Springs Cultural Center, 2300 E. Baristo Road, in Palm Springs. Tickets are $37.50, and the running time is about 85 minutes, with no intermission. For tickets or more information, call 760-565-2476, or visit www.desertensembletheatre.org.